
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Chap.^^. Copyright No... 
SheltsfilL.. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




j&twk*^*- Qzvz^L, 




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Stepping 





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ONE COPY RECEIVED 



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Copyright, 1897, by 
Louis Klopsch 







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N all Ages, the Search for Happiness has been the ultimate aim 
and desire of human effort — Happiness here and hereafter. To 
those Searchers, in every station in life, this Book is dedicated, 
in the hope that it may be the means of guiding them, by pleasant 
paths, to the true Temple of Happiness, whence flow those delectable 
streams that refresh the hearts and rejoice the souls of all who enter the 
quest with a pure and resolute purpose. 

i Happiness is equally attainable to the poor and the rich, the youth 
and the veteran ; and though multitudes have missed the Path, Step- 
ping Stones to Happiness will lead them back to the way, by which 
they may surely find it. May they, in turn, extend loving help to other 
struggling wayfarers on the same journey. 



1 







Go. Book of mine, go forth 

And give thy cheer, 
Go where upon the hearth 

The fire burns clear; 
Go where the evening lamp 

A rosy glow 
Sheds while the storms without 

Their wild blasts blow. 



Go under greenwood shade ; 

Find open doors 
Where babes like sunbeams play 

About the floors, 
And say the hand that wrought 

Would only bless 
And lend the simple art 

Of happiness. 



Go then, the world is wide, 

And give thy cheer; 
Perhaps some tender heart 

Will hold thee dear; 
Perhaps some pleasant hand 

Thy pages turn; 
Perhaps some gentle soul 

Thy message learn! 




gREFflGB 




HEN one writes for publication, however great the surroundiqg 
solitude, trjere is always oqe companion present, 

It is the personage known in literature as the Geqtle Reader. 
This reader is kiqder thaq one's self; has almost as much to do 
with the progress of the pages ; cheers, encourages, and helps witrj botrj 
subtle aqd outright sympathy, 

And when the manuscript has gone to do its work in the world, 
it is not of the great public that the writer thjnks, but of this single 
debonair reader. It is for those of like manners and feeliqgs tlqat these 
chapters have been written, Gentle Reader, out \r\ the unknown, be 
ge'qtle still ! Whoever and wherever you may be, wrjeq you opeq the6e 
leaves remenqber your old kindliness and forbear to criticise too harshly 
the pen tlqat would help you on the way across the Stepping Stones to 
Happiness. 

Harriet Prescott Spofford. 




CHAPTER I 

The Use of the Present — On a Texas Prairie — A Mirage — The 
Present Time — The Uses of This World — Advancing Years — 
Looking Backward — Disenchantment — Illusions — Idle Re- 
grets. 



PAGE. 

..17 



CHAPTER II 

Going Over Dry Shod — Perpetual Hope — An Ideal World — A 
Child's Discovery — The Surprise — Mrs. Mulgrave's Story. 



38 



CHAPTER III 

A Pause By the Way — Self -Reliance and Self -Reverence— St. 
Augustine's Dream — The Spiritual Mind — Reticence — Real 
Troubles — The Armor of Patience — A Mutual Dependence — 
Man's Majesty — The Happy Warrior — Miss Moggaridge's Pro- 
vider. 



56 



CHAPTER IV 

A Family Tree — Household Association — Plutarch's Advice — 
The Story of Xerxes and Ariamenes — Love of Ancestors — The 
Coat of Arms. 

(7) 



88 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER V 99 

A Heme in Town — Owning the House — The Sense of Perma- 
nence — Moving — Inside the House — The Vacation — Advan- 
tages of Town Life — City Children — Music at Home — The 
Piano-forte — Music Abroad — The Opera — Shopping — In the 
Street Car— The Cheery Town— The City Parlor —Old China— 
The Spinning Wheel in the Parlor— The Distaff— The Spinster 
— The Adventures of a Pound of Cotton — Society — The Gay 
Season — City Window Gardens — Louise Forester's Story. 

CHAPTER VI 151 

Under Green Boughs — Comparative Views of Town and Coun- 
try — Great Ideas Start in City — In a Suburban Town — The 
Love of Nature — Michelet's Twilight Experience — Sunlight. 

CHAPTER VII ... . 167 

Vine and Fig Tree — The Garden — The Almanac— The Apple- 
Tree — Woman in Agriculture — Among the Lake Dwellings — 
A Picturesque Sight — The Story of Mrs. Royal's Garden. 

CHAPTER VIII 193 

The House in the Country — Necessary Foresight — The Piazza 
— In the Furnishing — The Parlor — The Library — The Rosillon 
House. 

CHAPTER IX 216 

The Health of the Home — Old Water-courses in Town — Rock 
and Gravel — The Cellar — The Prevention That is Better than 
Cure — The Only Curse on the House — We or Providence to 
Blame — Children's Diseases — Disinfectants — The Scarlet Fever 



CONTENTS. 9 

PAGE. 

—The Children of the Poor— The Lively Fly— At Autumn 
Time — The Birds When the Days Shorten — Light-Hearted 
October — By the Hearth. 

CHAPTER X 243 

The Light of the House— The Mother— The Ideal Mother— 
The Everyday Mother — The Story of Old Margaret and Her 
Boy. 

CHAPTER XI 260 

A Well-Spring of Joy— The Baby— The Care of the Baby— The 
Moral Growth of the Child — Help From the Great Educators 
— Froebel — The Kindergarten — The Gifts in Froebel's System 
— School Another World — On Visiting a Kindergarten — John 
Wesley's Mother— Slojd — The Happy Result — The Scory of 
the Hurricane Light. 

CHAPTER XII 306 

Other Children — Medicine Rather Than Punishment — Hered- 
ity — Sparing the Rod — Loving Children — They Who Really 
Love Children — Troublesome Children — Keeping Silence — 
Amusing the Small People — With Pencil and Paper — A New 
Game — Another Game — The Story of Laddy's Burglar. 

CHAPTER XIII 343 

Angels Unawares — What a Boy Thought of His Grandmother — 
Old Age — Growing Old Gracefully — The Satisfactions of Age 
—The Refinement of Old Age— The Town "Lady"— Ailments 
in the Family — The Right Sleep — The Grandmother's Charm 
— Delight in Poetry — The Story of a Perpetual Thanksgiving. 



.o CONTEXTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER XIV 376 

About Pets — Poor Dog- Tray — Famous L gs — The Dog in 
Literature — Harmless Xecessary Cat — The Cat's Beauty — The 
Cat's Virtues — The Cat a Fireside Ornament — The Little 
Egyptian Cat — The Cat's Usefulness — The Norway Rat — The 
Bird in the Cage — Pretty Poll — The Children and the Parrot — 
Famous Parrots — A Kerry Cow — Advantages of the Cow — 
Pegasus — The Woman Who Used To Drive — The Woman 
Who Drives Xow. 

CHAPTER XV 395 

The Household Conduct — The Ideal Household — Managing 
and Ruling — Tyranny and its Result in Cunning — Working 
Together — Daily Cares — The Hired Housekeeper — The Strong- 
Box — A Vacation — Schools For Cooks — A Radical Procedure — 
Old Cookery Books — Ancient Feasts — The Peacock at Banquets 
— A Battle at Table — Some Economies — The Englishwoman's 
Economy — Saving On a Small Scale — Old Dishes — Different 
Kitchens — Undreamed Dishes — The Mushroom — The Story of 
Sylvia Dexte. 

CHAPTER XVI 429 

Work — Mrs. Browning's Word — The Value of Work to Char- 
acter — All Creation Works — Conscience in the Work — Work 
Here and Abroad — Love of Art Equaling Conscience — Those 
Who Are Down On Their Luck— Rest After Work— The Rest 
of Travel— The Mind in Travel— The Reader in Travel- 
Travel in Our Own Land. 



CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER XVII 

Love of Others — Associated Charities — Transmission of In- 
itiated Organisms — Extremes of Wealth and Poverty — Giving 
at the Door — Lovely Examples — A Degrading Ccurse — The 
Poor a Benison — What the Poor Have Done — The Story of 
Anstress. 



ii 

PAGE. 

■449 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Genial Temper — An Unpleasant Idiosyncrasy — Love of 
Injury — Fancied Slights — Quid Pro Quo— The Undisciplined 
Temper — The Sinners Themselves — The Sulky Soul — A 
Remedy — The Perfecting of the World— Protoplasm and Dust 
— Right and Light — Transmuting Clay — Self-Forgetfulness — 
The Child's Troubles— Another World To Complete This— 
Changing Our Condition For Another's — Rejoicing in An- 
other's Joy — The Golden Time For Love — On Tranquil 
Heights — Hand in Hand With Angels — The Riches of Angels 
— True Happiness At Last — Matthew Arnold's Wish. 



472 




ILLUSTRATIONS 

<^> f$> fto 

PAGE 

The Journey 1 8 

Bells Ring Love's Story Song 19 

As We Rolled on Through This Marvelous Landscape 20 

Herd of Cattle Coming Down to Drink 22 

Solitude 25 

Truly We Are Not of Their Number 27 

At Morning We Used to Feel It Was Going to Be Morning All Day. ... 28 
The Illusion that Surrounds the Dead with a Halo Is Certainly a Blessed 

One : 30 

The Home of Childhood 32 

The Contemptuous Stare of Somebody in a Paris Hat ^^ 

Dripping that Wears the Stone 34 

Expectancy a much more Emphatic Thing than Hope 35 

The Bright Drapery of Dreams and Pleasant Fancies 37 

Never Birds Sang as I Heard Them 39 

In the Wave- Washed Sand 41 

The Ship that Is Coming into Harbor 42 

If It had Been the Queen a-Commg In 44 

You Couldn't Shut a Drawer 46 

That Sea View Would Be Good as a Picture 47 

I Was the Most Unhappy Woman 49 

Dwelling upon the Spiritual 53 

The Sweet Influence of a Loving Sympathy 57 

A Happy Face Does a Service to Humanity 59 

We Are Most of Us Inclined to Sympathize 61 

(12) 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 13 



PAGE. 



The Good Are Lifting Up the Bad 67 

To Every Earnest, Striving Soul 69 

A Letter Came to Miss Ann 76 

The Ship Went to Pieces '. 80 

Bonds of Blood Relationship 87 

The Same Mother's Knee 89 

Reverence of the Young for the Old 91 

The Stiff, Prim Likeness cf Some Grandam 93 

Tenderness for Those Dead and Gone 95 

The Possession of a Home 97 

Industry 1 00 

On the Wing 102 

Sunshine of Pleasant Faces 104 

Steamer Trips 107 

Professors Find Their Support in Cities 109 

The Music-room Conservatory in 

Music's Largest Audiences in the Town 113 

Shopping 115 

Satchel-bearing Suburbans 116 

The Distaff 124 

The Spinning-wheel 127 

Rude as the Spinning-wheel Seems to Us Now 129 

Flock of Sheep . 131 

(From a Painting by Anton Mauve.) 

Always a Gay Season in Town 134 

John Ruskin 137 

(Bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, R. A.) 

Bowers of Loveliness 138 

Flowers 139 

Flowers the Only Comfort that I Had 140 

So Still and Dark and Solemn 143 

A Box out of Every Window in the House 144 

I Came Home with Ladies' Tresses 145 

The Corner of My Dear Wild Flowers 146 



i 4 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE. 

This Place of Enchantment 150 

You Must Have Known I Loved You 152 

The Sweet Look that Nature Wears 154 

The Loneliness of Rural Regions 157 

A Sewing Circle 158 

Some Lovely Landscape 161 

Mountains Lifting Their Heads into Heaven 162 

White and Innocent Fields 1 63 

A Luxury of Life Is Theirs in the Spring 164 

The Dark Shadow of the Branch -hung Stream 166 

The Twilight Hour : 168 

Every Man Loves His Garden 171 

The Modest Kitchen Garden 173 

Title Page of Poor Richard's Almanack for 1733 177 

Who Owns an Apple-tree and Does not Wish for Two? 180 

The Harvest of the Grain Field 182 

Making Grow Where Nothing Grew Before 185 

A Picturesque Object in the Landscape 187 

(Painted by Jules Breton. ) 

Itself Draped with Vines 200 

Such a Place Should be Made Attractive 212 

Unable to Look a Man in the Face 217 

Reeled and Fell Backward 220 

Looking Down at Him 222 

He Remembered the Place 224 

Mother's Devotion 248 

Sitting and Playing His Banjo 250 

Practicing for a Long Migration 256 

What a Singular Charm There Is about the First Fire of Wood 263 

Rock Me to Sleep, Mother 268 

She Spells out the Lesson with Her Child 274 

Beauty and Glcry of Motherhood 276 

Helpless Morsel of Humanity 286 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



J 5 



PAGE. 

The Child Will Have a Love of Work 288 

The Little Face Lies Near Her Own 290 

The Hurricane Light-House 293 

Love Lines of the Kindergarten Methods 308 

Not to Fail in Exhaustless Gentleness 310 

Little Merchants 312 

The Young Expanding Intellect 315 

Reprimanded 317 

The Opening Soul of Childhood 319 

Necessary that the Little Things Should Be Made Happy 321 

Love of the Child for Drawing 323 

Monument at New Plymouth to the Pilgrim Fathers 325 

A Way cf Making It a Charming Amusement 327 

He Saw the Club Roll By 331 

Laddy Slipped Out of Bed 33$ 

The Sweet Serenity of Silver-haired Age 345 

That Tenderness Felt for the Old 347 

Gayeties of Her Grandchildren 349 

Gentle and Well Bred, and that Is the Whole Lady 353 

Drawing and Sculpture During the Palaeolithic Epoch 364 

Her Few Letters Were Spasmodic and Brief 366 

That Turkey will be Looking Like a Big Heathen God 373 

Net the Sole Constituents of the Family 377 

Cats Are a Part of the Lares and Penates 382 

The Ideal Household 399 

Banquet of Vitellius 407 

Look at the Jewels. Oh, What a Glitter! 42 2 

From One Sick-bed to Another 425 

Inundation of the Nile 439 

Ascent of Mont Blanc 441 

Dryburgh Abbey from the East - 443 

Kenilworth Castle 445 

The Switzer Trail, Sierra Madre Mountains, California 447 



16 ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE. 

More Agreeable if We could Sit down at Our Fancy Work 455 

The Most We Can Do for the Poor is but a Debt We Owe 457 

Love Is a Potent Shield against Many Troubles 479 

It Is not Easy to Think It Is not as Fine as It Can Be 481 

To Go to Bed Just as the Lamps are Lighted 488 

Rolling by in Her Luxurious Coach 490 








wx 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER FIRST. 



One Stepping Stone— The Use of the Present. 

OW good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy ! 

— Browning. 



Remember that man's life lies all within this present, as 'twere but a hair's breadth of 
time ; as for the rest, the past is gone, the future yet unseen. 

— Marcus Aurelius. 



Now is the accepted time. 



■St. Paul. 



Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, 
But an eternal now does always last. 

— Cowley. 



Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour. 



Winter. 



Count them by sensation and not by calendars, and each moment is a day 



-Disraeli. 



O last regret, regret can die 



Tennyson. 



i8 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THE JOURNEY. 

On a Texas Prairie. 

It was in one of the long journeys across Texas that the train stop- 
ping at a water-tank was boarded by a half-dozen children of the village 
that had grown up about the station, children to whom the train came 
like a herald and messenger from the great outside world. I sat at the 
end of the observation car, looking out over the wide prairie whose ineffable 
green under an immense arch cf dazzling blue sky billowed away into 
the low horizon. The gentlemen had stepped down to look at some curiosity 
near by, and being mistress of the occasion I allowed the children the liberty 
of the car, which they enjoyed to the utmost. "I thought I would give you 
fifty dollars, if you would let me ride in this car," said one adventurous and 






STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



J 9 



bare-footed little damsel, who had never 
seen fifty cents in the world, although her 
father was rich in lands and herds. 

"Why did you want to ride in this car?" 
I asked. 

'Oh, I thought it would be such happi- 
ness!" she cried. "But I reckon I would 
like the burro best." 

Her dream of happiness! To ride in the 
car. And mine so opposite — to be out of it. 
And then the porter came in his august 
plenitude of power and shooed the children 
off, and the gentlemen returned from their 
call upon the people who summered and 
wintered a dozen years in their tent, and 
we presently went our way again. 

As we rolled on through the marvelous 
landscape, its great dells and dingles of 
live oak, its streams outlined by ribbons of white lilies, where the duck 
rose and skimmed away, its blazes of scarlet phlox, its coverts where the deer 
started at our coming, and its stretches where the wild horses galloped ; there 
suddenly rose in the distance the vision of a river blue as blue crystal, 
mirroring trees hung with long wreaths of swaying moss, a herd of cattle com- 
ing down to drink there, and behind it the dim but gilded domes and spires 
of a city shone, the whole bathed in a soft atmosphere like that light which 
never was on sea or shore. 




BELLS RING LOVE S STORY SONG. 



A Mirage. 



It was a mirage that hung there before us for a little while, like reality, 
and then as we would have approached, it vanished. 

"It is like happiness," I said to myself, "the little girl's, or mine, or an- 
other's. It is always before us; it disappears as we think we approach. No 
rapture is so sweet as its anticipation was. Happiness is a mirage." And an 
old verse came to mind: For here we have no abiding city. 

Well, then, I thought, that mirage, at any rate, represents something to 
which we wish to attain. It is an image of that abiding city elsewhere; 
and every day of our lives there are stepping-stones for us to use in reach- 



20 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



- 





AS WE ROLLED ON THROUGH 
THIS MARVELOUS LANDSCAPE. 



jp^ If the mirage vanishes as we 

W^ draw near, we have always in 

the present the measure cf 
happiness that comes with 
brave endurance; in the fu- 
ture that comes with expectancy ; and one day we reach the great goal. Let 
us be content then, day by day, with the stepping-stones. 



The Present Time. 

It is a singular thing that the present is something which most of us are 
always scouting. The past lies in an inwrapping mist that hides all pettiness, 
all daily annoyance, and leaves only the salient facts of pleasure or displeas- 
ure apparent, and has about it in our fancy some of the sacred character with 
which we surround the dead. The future, too, wears a halo rimmed with joy- 
ous expectancy, and is a Delectable Land gilded in a sunlight of possibility. 
But the present — the here and now — is our every-day life, is dull and 
commonplace, and worth little. What we might have done in the past we re- 
gard with a certain fondness ; what we may do in the future, with eager antici- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 21 

pation; what we can do in the present, with doubt and disgust. Never do to- 
day what you can put off till to-morrow, is a reversal of the ancient maxim 
that goes to the heart of many of us. We are too apt to have that contempt 
for to-day which we have for all familiar things, and we disregard its 
opportunities, just as we think, in piping times of peace, that we could have 
done so much better if we had been born in a stirring era ; or in war times, that 
we ' ' should have come to something" if we had had the opportunities that peace 
affords; just as we think, if our surname is a common one, that it would have 
been very different with us if we had been born Montmorencys or Grosvenors; 
if we are poor, that with wealth we could have sprung upward as the vaulter 
flies with the upward impulsion of the spring-board; if we are rich, that per- 
haps poverty would have spurred us to a worthy exertion. 

There are f ew of us that willingly take to-day as a stepping-stone, few of 
us who think cf it as a stepping-stone at all. Yet if we so frequently fail to 
avail ourselves now of the opportunities of the moment, when to-morrow is to- 
day shall we regard it as any better worth, or do anymore wisely with the new 
possession? And yet we all know that if we are going to do anything with 
to-morrow we must be making ready to-day. When to-morrow comes rising 
over us it may be as full of opportunities as the cloud is of lightnings, but if 
we have not our kite ready to fly, we shall draw none of those lightnings down. 

But while, on the one hand, this disregard and waste of the present is loss 
to ourselves, on the other hand, it involves a peculiar selfishness, a sort of psy- 
chological anomaly, that is seldom guessed or considered. We delay the dis- 
agreeable duty, put off the laborious effort, till to-morrow, for what reason? 
Because to-morrow is another country, another climate, an unknown region, 
and because the person of to-morrow is quite another person from the person 
cf to-day — so very much another that the person of to-day saves himself all 
the difficulty and trouble possible by pushing it over to the person of to-mor- 
row. It is only another form of that selfishness which we exhibit when we in- 
dulge ourselves in any license, in any pleasure of the present, for which we 
know to-morrow will bring in a heavy price and penalty to be paid. The per- 
son of to-day is to have the license and the pleasure, the person of tc-morrow 
must pay the penalty. It is indeed only another form of that terrible selfishness 
which allows the parent to practice a self-indulgence which shall some day 
ruin the child, who does not inherit any share of the pleasure cf that self-in- 
dulgence, but only the ruin of its penalty. 

But the selfishness of this evasion of the present rises into more metaphy- 
sical regions. The folly ot it is something that even the simplest thinker can 
hardly fail to see. For the present is all that we certainly have, and to let it 
slip by unimproved is to make ourselves so much the poorer, since the mo- 



22 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 




HERD OF CATTLE COMING DOWN TO DRINK. 



ment that we improve is ours forever, but the moment that we do not seize, 
do not improve, escapes us, has nothing to do with us, never enriches us, 
never was, indeed, so far as we are concerned, and our life is by that much 
more a blank. The present is as safe as time; to-morrow is as vague as eter- 
nity. Eternity may have its own uses; we know nothing about them; it is 
among infinite things, and we are among finite. The uses of time we know 
well, and that one of them is to make ourselves round and complete as a star 
for our course through that infinity. 

"Ages past the soul existed; f 

Here an age tis resting merely, 

And hence fleets again for ages." 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 23 

The Uses of This World. 

The poet Browning, in some of his verses, speaks of this world and this 
life as something that sets the scene, as one might say, of this particular por- 
tion of the drama of our soul's existence; and that act incompletely rendered, 
the whole drama fails of perfection. Suppose, for instance, it were the stage 
set merely for the love scene of the drama; were that lost, then the whole thing 
would want point and meaning, and the soul be by that much the more barren. 

"Else it loses what it lived for, 
And eternally must lose it; 
Better ends may be m prospect, 
Deeper blisses, if you choose it, 
But this life's end and this love bliss 
Have been lost here." 

It would be but a poor and material supposition, though, to conjecture 
that the world were only the resting-place for spirits on the wing, pausing but 
long enough for that one experience, however great, however beautiful, it 
may be. To the young it might possibly seem a charming fancy; they do not 
give the world for love, but have an idea, indeed, that the world was given 
them for love, and in that view they certainly cannot be accused of not improv- 
ing the present, which is the world. But love, the love of man and woman, 
is merely one wondrous phase of our soul's existence, like the ray that sparkles 
in the brilliant jet of some special color as the crystal takes the light. Love 
of another kind, the love of fellow-men, the love of man and God, is the very 
medium, indeed, that surrounds us and gives us communication, atom by 
atom, with the universe, that will accompany us forever, it is to be hoped. 
And there are far other purposes apparent in life than the wedding of twin 
souls. For, since this love is the to-day of youth and the yesterday of age, it 
can not be the present of any other era, and one era deserves as much of fate as 
the other. But whatever the present be, whether the time to love or the time to 
hate, the time to weep or the time for rejoicing, it is only those that live in it 
that can do anything with it. And they who forget all its claims, and live 
only in the future, live only to and for the future Even those who make a 
religious point of it, as if the future were a thing any dearer to the Creator 
than the present, are quite as unwise as they who risk everything on the sea 
of the passing moment. "This world is all a fleeting show, ' ' says the one side. 
"Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," says the other. 
And the one side forgets that God lives in His world, and that it is not theirs 
to contemn it or to deride a portion of His work, and the other s-ide forgets 
that this mortal shall put on immortality. 



24 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Of a truth it befits us to make the most of the present; for there comes at 
last to most of us a season when all at once we wake to the fact that we are no 
longer young - , and something angry with fate, with ourselves, with the laws 
of the universe, and with those that observe them in relation to us, we experi- 
ence surprise and indignation, as if we were the only ones who ever grew old. 



Advancing Years. 

Any trifle will scratch the match, but it kindles a great fire, in which the 
dreams and hopes of youth begin to dissipate in smoke and vapor. Someone 
incidentally speaks of us as ' ' middle-aged, " whereas our mothers hardly seem 
to us to have passed that meridian, the boundary line of a different 1 and from 
youth; but after a fair debate with facts and the looking-glass, we have had tc 
yield the point. 

The daughter of our old schoolmate, married on or about her graduation- 
day, who has now grown up and come before us to replace her mother in some 
mysterious way, receives our embrace as a "good motherly kiss, " and arouses 
us to the circumstance that whatever we have been thinking of her as our con- 
temporary, she has been thinking of us as her mother's contemporary. 

We have never given the subject a thought before, it has been one of the 
things taken for granted with us that of course we are young, just as the sky 
is blue or the earth round, because we always have been young — that, in truth, 
all people are young till they feel old. But what are the facts? For the first 
time we consider them. As far as years goto make up the count, we must ad- 
mit that we have crossed the median line, perhaps: our years are no longer 
the years of romance and poetry. As far as looks go — well, it is true there are 
silver threads among the gold; we had regarded them as accidents, but they 
were not accidents — they were necessities ; there are wrinkles round the eye?, 
more or less, which have no longer the firm young muscle to hold them full; 
some teeth are missing, or the dazzle of the enamel is gone; there is the sus- 
picion of a horrid hollow on the cheek; under the best conditions, and however 
attractive the face may remain, the rosy roundness there is gone. So far as 
feelings go — well, it has seemed to us till now only as if life deepened and en- 
riched itself each year. Then we begin to look about us, peradventure to see 
how the thing strikes the rest of the world. We have spent years in listening, 
in learning, in making ourselves companionable and possibly entertaining; 
we see the veriest chit, with her luscious flesh and color, ignorant of life and 
of everything else but her own senses, preferred before us. Ah! then other 
people found out long ago what has just been revealed to us: we are old, and 
have been making fools of ourselves in masquerading as young. We declare 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



25 



to our self- investigation, then, that we do not care for the successes of the 
pretty girl; it may be that we had as much in our day, we do not find it in 
our heart to envy her; perhaps we pity her that the beam in which she sports 
so soon must fade. Then suddenly we see that we are pitying the young; 
truly we are not of their number ! And if we had no sensation of the sort be- 
fore, henceforth we acknowledge that we have one foot in the grave. Then, 
by slow access of meditation, we are aware that much of the freshness of feel- 
ing is gone, much of that which once gave us rapture, our power of joyous ap- 
preciation, our fullness of enthusiasm ; we are not again rapt by the spell of 
any great painting into fairy-land, as the case has been with us, when all the 
lovely hues and aerial distances seemed to be portions of the region to which 
we traveled, that region into which the coming years were sure to bring us; 
no single dash of color in the sky fills us with unspeakable delight and longing 
after the unknown; we do not lean out into the star-lit nights with conscious 
companionship of the spirits of 
the stars and the deeps and the 
dark — we are a little afraid of the 
damps and draughts and rheum- 
atism; we remember all these 
things ; we do not feel them afresh. 
Nor do the same books please us, 



SOLITUDE 

we find, that 
once we read 
and re-read ; 
the poems 
that we ruin- 
ed with our 
pencil marks 




*4*J 



\«u 



^K>^, 



26 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

and underscoring- have ceased to charm, and the volumes that in the days of 
those pencil-marks we would have scorned, now attract us at first sight; the 
bread-and-butter novel moves us to derision ; we feel sufficient acquaint- 
ance with life and its passions and subtle motives and secret springs to read the 
books of darker dealings. Dancing does not seem to us, either, the pleasantest 
way in the world in which to spend time. We do not think a youth of twen- 
ty-one or twenty-two the ideal being for whom the heavens and earth were cre- 
ated. Possibly we prefer lamp-light and people to all the moonlight and soli- 
tude in the world. What then? It seems that middle age has its pleasures, 
which it would not exchange for those of youth ; why will we persist in look- 
ing back so regretfully on those of youth, which we would no longer enjoy if 
we had them ? 



Looking Backward. 

If we do not wish to dance, why do we envy those who do? If a dried 
date does not taste to us now rich with all spicy flavors of unknown lands, but 
like a commonplace sweetmeat, compensation comes in the fact that we have 
no craving for the date. And yet it seems to be insufficient compensation : 
we wish we had that craving, remembering the pleasure of its satisfaction. 
We are not like the old proverb's dog in the manger, that neither wants a thing 
himself nor is willing that another should have it; on the contrary, we are 
much more like the little boy who eats his cake and wants it, too. Nothing 
would induce us to forego the various happinesses of the period to which we 
have arrived, the calmness and repose, the clear-headed comprehension of 
vexed problems, the wealth of memory, the power of looking out on the world 
and not only seeing as in youth, but of summarizing and philosophizing on 
what we see. Yet, for all that, we remember how round was the cheek of 
youth, how delicious was life at the dawning; and here is the shadow of the 
unknown future beginning to fall over us, and full soon shall we feel the breath 
of the dark river; and we see fresh meaning in the words of the old preacher: 
"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the 
sun, but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remem- 
ber the days of darkness, for they shall be many." As the monarch considers 
a demand for the surrender of his sceptre, so do we hate to lay down our sover- 
eignty, to retreat as the new generation becomes regnant, to become not only 
the mere commoners and superannuaries of the present, but the pensioners of 
the past, to feel, perhaps, a passing remembered and reflected thrill of the 
keen, quick joy at the fragrance of a wind, at bell notes on the evening air, at 




TRULY WE ARE NOT OF THEIR NUMBER. 



28 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




JJ.|*Tcoler- 



AT MORNING WE USED TO FEEL IT WAS GOING TO BE MORNING ALL DAY. 



so many other delightful things that once we felt in full, to feel, when that 
wind blow3, and that bell rings, and that love story is sung, and that evening 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 29 

air grows purple, that our thrill is only the memory of the thrills cf years and 
years ago, to know that a multitude of choicest pleasures now are no more the 
objects of actual experience, but are only an impalpable procession of blood- 
less ghosts. 

But for all that, the past was not so perfect when it was the present that 
we need to compare it too strenuously with to-day. While that itself was the 
present there was much amiss with it. It is true that when we were very 
young every object in creation seemed gilded with the glory of our own 
dawn. At morning we used to feel that it was going to be morning all day, 
with blue sky and sparkling dew and flower scents and freshness; but at noon 
we hardly remembered another joy than those under the meridian; and our 
only shadow of vexation was that night must needs come to put an end to it 
all. But when we ceased to be very young how sorry we sometimes were to 
open our eyes and find it morning! How glad we were fain to be when night 
came and brought another day to its close! Fortunate they who, in middle 
life and in still more advanced years, carry the morning always with them, 
and love the hour, whatever it may be, and the fortune it brings with it. 

Yet, sooth to say, there are very few of us who bring our ideals up to 
the end with us all unbroken. The mists of early day magnify the objects we 
see through them. This fruit is sweeter to the virgin palate than it ever will 
be to the taste accustomed to all impressions ; that flower scent never can be 
found again ; that music on the water never sounds to us, now that even-song 
has sung, as it did when blown on the winds of morning. When Henry Es- 
mond met Father Holt, after he had grown to be a man, he "smiled to think 
that this was his oracle of early days, only now no longer infallible or divine." 



Disenchantment. 

How many a young person there must be who, dominated over by a ma- 
turer mind and personality, with attractions and conjurations of its own, 
shakes off the spell in after-times, and sees with amazement that the god, if 
not made of putty, yet is only common flesh and blood! How many a woman 
has waked, after years of marriage with the one idolized at the outset, to find 
that the idol had feet of clay! How many a man has married a doll, and by 
the slow process of disenchanting years has felt no surprise when at last he 
saw the sawdust/ Yet they who find the demi-god of youth still a demi-god, 
when middle life has rubbed the cobwebs out of their eyes, when the high 
noon has dissipated those magnifying mists of morning, they who preserve 
their idols and find them and their informing spirits golden still, they who 
have no occasion to be reminded that there is such a thing as sawdust in the 




THE ILLUSION THAT SURROUNDS THE DEAD WITH A HALO IS CERTAINLY 
(30) A BLESSED ONE. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 31 

world — how blest are they, blest with the good fortune that is theirs, blest 
even if it is illusion and they themselves are not wise enough to be aware of it! 



Illusions. 

For surely there is a pleasure in our illusions, so long as we do not know 
them to be illusions. So long, indeed, as we are ignorant of that, they are not 
illusions, but as blessed verities as any of the fixed truths of the universe. 
To believe a person great and good is to endow him with all the great and 
good qualities we revere, and if by the added exaltation which we might de- 
rive from him if he really exerted those qualities upon us, it does not actually 
matter, for, on the contrary, by insisting upon it that he shall have the noble 
characteristics, they have to be created somewhere, and if only in our imagin- 
ation, then at least that far we have been exalted by being their creators 
ourselves. It is our own natures that have been the matrices of the statue we 
have reared to him, and he is none the worse and we are somewhat the better. 

The illusion, too, that surrounds the dead with a halo is certainly a blessed 
one, all that was ignoble or unlovely in them sinking out of sight and memory 
and only the beautiful remaining, till, if they are not angels in the unseen 
sphere they visit, so much of them as remains in our memory is altogether 
angelic. And if we may have blessed illusions concerning those that are gone 
away from us, how equally blessed are those concerning the affairs that might 
have come to us but never do ! The songs we never sang are far the sweetest ; 
the wife who was never wed, the hero for whom the maiden waits, the little 
children never born and never to be born — what perfectness enwrap them 
all ! Elia's Dream Children were lovelier and sweeter, and dearer, too, than any 
children that Charles Lamb ever met. It is a thing to be thankful for when 
any experience of our earlier years is left to us untouched by the tarnishing 
fingers ot time ; that we can still visit the house that used to seem to us in our 
childhood the House Beautiful, and find there the fair chamber looking to 
the east; that the young girl who hardly needed wings for her translation 
seems as ethereal still; that the child who went early and never grew up to 
mundane coarseness is still to us a cherub out of heaven, who folded his wings 
awhile ere he fled back to heaven again. 

And perhaps it is another thing to be quite as thankful for, the illusions 
we all have more or less about ourselves. As we never fairly see ourselves in 
the mirror, the right side there becoming the left, so that we get none but a 
false and distorted vision of ourselves, what virtues, what triumphs of truth, 
kindness and generosity do we not seem in that inner vision to possess! For 



32 



STEPPING vSTONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THE HOME OF CHILDHOOD. 



would we not make such and such 
'/-;- ■" great gifts, and perform such and 

such magnanimous acts, if things 
were only a little different with us? 
If we had the bank account of that billionaire, would we not be paying off the 
national debt? As it is, we have hardly enough for ourselves. And what 
Ithuriels we are, too, in that inner vision — we who scorn all untruth except 
that which may be absolutely necessary to save ourselves from other people's 
ill opinion! and what angels of mercy are we in that picture we delight to 
look at — we who roll the last scandal under our tongue for a choice morsel, 
and are glad when what we have is better than what our neighbor has! Well, 
if we are to sit in sackcloth and ashes for our sins, our bad traits, hereditary 
or otherwise, our good traits uncultivated, we shall have a sad time of it; and 
so blessed be these, with all the other of our illusions that hinder us ever from 
seeing a grain of sawdust in any doll we have. For if a sorrow's crown of sorrow 
is remembering happier things, how often the reverse is true, and how we find 
ourselves forced to smile at the very affairs that seemed unbearable in the 
bearing, but which have proved to be, if not angels in disguise, yet things 
that took a glory on their flying wings. Last year how bitter and detesta- 
ble was that experience! This year the conditions are changed; the situation 
is otherwise; it seems to have been a very trifle about which to make such a 
fuss ; we laugh at ourselves and at that trouble of the past. 

The fact is that a person must be of a very sympathetic cast in order to 
feel intensely the troubles of others; it is not quite possible to realize them; 
every one has not sufficient self-forgetfulness to be able to displace himself, 
or sufficient imagination to plant himself on another centre as regards the 




THE CONTEMPTUOUS STARE OF SOMEBODY IN A PARIS HAT. 



34 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




universe, and occupy the position of an- 
other party. But that is what must be 
done if one would feel very keenly the 
pains of the past, for to-day you are your- 
self, but yesterday, as it has been said, 
you were quite another person ; the ka- 
leidoscope has taken another turn, and the 
relation of atoms is a new one. 



DRIPPING THAT WEARS THE STONE. 



Idle Regrets. 

Last year's toothache does not hurt us; 
it seems as though it hurt some one else; 
in truth it seems as if that tooth might 
have been saved. Last year's affront makes 
us smile to think we should have been such 
fools as to mind it ; the misery we endur- 
ed a twelve-month since, in our old bon- 
net, from the contumelious stare of some- 
body in a Paris hat, is now, in the distance, too infinitesimal for us to conde- 
scend to remember. But then it is quite possible that we have a new hat our- 
selves this year, that nobody is affronting us, that our teeth are in fine order; 
we should not dream of allowing ourselves to be unbalanced by such trifles 
anyway now — what are they to be compared to the sore hangnail of the pres- 
ent moment, to the sudden cracking and unexpected shininessof our best silk, 
to the bill with no mcney to pay it! Yesterday's troubles vanish in the per- 
spective of two narrowing lines, to-day's hover just before the sight, and shut 
out everything else. We cannot, to be sure, forget the facts of the past trou- 
bles, but all their sting and anguish is over and gone. 

Of course we are not speaking of the real and significant griefs, the vital 
sorrows of the past, the unavailing regrets, the losses never to be made good 
— events whose meaning has entered into our being, and incorporated itself 
with our soul. Those things die only when we do, and will not, it may be, 
die even then, for their discipline may have been the thing we needed most, 
and nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost out 
of our posssesion. 

In "My Summer with Dr. Singletary," Whittier says: "The present will 
live hereafter, memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds, for 
only in the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our identity and 




EXPECTANCY A MUCH MORE EMPHATIC THING THAN HOPE. (35} 



3 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world, and what would 
heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would be simple anni- 
hilation ot our actual selves and the substitution therefor of a new creation 
in which we should have no more interest than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or 
the fixed stars." Still, although memory may thus be the vital current of our 
identity, we doubt if we shall carry with us into any life whatever, memory of 
the little teasing details of our annoyances, although their effect may be felt 
forever in countless touches on cur natures, like the fret of that ceaseless drip- 
ping which wears a stone. It is, indeed, only the exceptional nature, and often 
the morbid one, that is able to recall pain, that is saddened by its recollection, 
but we can all of us thrill again with the recollection of old joys; and the op- 
timist might well argue, from experience of the truth, that pain is perishable, 
but -joy is immortal. 

Perhaps if we recognized this more forcibly, the petty provocations, the 
little teasing troubles, that are so "tolerable and not to be endured" while we 
are laboring through them, would cease to make the present uncomfortable, 
would wear less detestable aspects as they came, would no longer excite, in 
the rebellion against them, our ill temper, malice, hatred, and all uncharita- 
bleness, and would make less final impressions upon our nature than even 
now they do ; we might refuse to be provoked or teased by them, and remem- 
bering the evanescence of pain and vexation, and the permanency of joy, we 
might yet learn a lesson from the trees of the forest that heal their wounds 
with precious gums; from the oysters that mend their shells with pearls. 



Led by a kindlier hand than ours, 

We journey through this earthly scene, 
And should not, m our weary hours, 

Turn to regret what might have been. 

And yet these hearts, when torn by pain, 

Or wrung by disappointment keen 
Will seek relief from present cares 

In thought of joys that might have been. 

But let us still these wishes vain ; 

We know not that of which we dream ; 
Our lives might have been sadder yet; 

God only knows what might have been. 

Forgive us, Lord, our little faith. 

And help us all. from morn till e'en. 
Still to believe that lot the best 

Which is— not that which might have been. 

— G. Z Gray. 







THE BRIGHT DRAPERY OF DREAMS AND PLEASANT FANCIES 



3 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER SECOND. 



Dry Shod. 

'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear, 

Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were. 

— Sir John Suckling. 

If a flower 
Were thrown yon out of heaven at intervals 
You'd soon attain to a trick of looking up. 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

In all the splendor farther on 

We missed the morning's maiden blush, 
The soft expectancy was gone, — ■ 

The brooding haze, the trembling flush. 

— Margaret E. Sangster. 

I place faith in three friends — and they are powerful and invincible ones — namely, 
God, and your head, and mine. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 

For every minute is expectancy 
Of more arrivance. 

— Shakespeare. 

Hope to joy is little less in joy than hope enjoyed. 

— Shakespeare. 

But although the art of living chiefly in the present, and of letting the dead 
past bury its dead, gives us two of the stepping-stones to happiness, still, 
would we go over dry-shod, the next one must not be overlooked. It is the 
joy of perpetual hope. 



Perpetual Hope. 

For there are few joys of life comparable with that of expectancy, espe- 
cially the expectancy of people of imagination. This is a singular fact, and 
speaks largely for the spiritual side of our nature; for few of the joys of real- 
ization and possession ever quite reach the heights of hope and imagination. 
Expectancy is, however, a much more emphatic thing than hope, since it sig- 
nifies certainty, where the other is uncertain — signifies assurance and right, 




NEVER BIRDS SANG AS I HEARD THEM. 



(39) 



4 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

signifies hope with the seal of authority upon it. We hope for many things 
without a shadow of ground for our hoping; we only expect that which we 
feel is sure to come. And what a pleasure is there in the expectancy, calling 
upon senses that know no sating! As the world within the looking-glass is 
an ideal world; as the scene in the Claude Lorraine glass is transfigured; as 
any commonplace thing, when reflected out of the actual and tangible, takes 
on an aura of grace and refinement — so expectancy gives us sensations just 
beyond reality, refines the real and idealizes facts. 



An Ideal World. 

One living in a state of expectancy, however temporary, lives really in an 
ideal world while it lasts. Every thing that comes within it is taken out of 
bald facts, and clothed in the bright drapery of dreams and pleasant fancies. 
Exactly what is expected never comes, to be sure, and unconsciously in 
these seasons of expectancy all of us are more or less poets. The maiden 
who wonders if her lover's steed "keeps pace with her expectancy and flies," 
is looking for a lover many degrees finer and tenderer than the lover who at 
last arrives, and divides the enjoyment of his love-making with the enjoyment 
of his cigar. The wife who awaits her husband, her heart beating at every 
sound, "listening less to her own music than for footsteps on the walk," pic- 
tures to herself, although perhaps without an articulate thought about it, a sort 
of model King Arthur, a noble pattern of all the excellencies, and in her love 
of this superior being of her conjuration forgets all about the real man, who, 
when he comes, will complain if his slippers have not been warmed, if his 
supper is not to his mind, who wants his wife well dressed on nothing a year, 
wants his table well set, but grumbles over the bills, and in general plays the 
part of that Pharaoh who would have bricks made without straw. And in 
turn, the husband whose wife has been absent, and who has missed her order- 
ing, her bustling, her fault-finding, her presence in the house, so long that he 
has had time to forget the disagreeable part of her and remember only the 
cheerful and sweet, strangely recalls, now that he awaits her return, the wife 
of his youth, the girl he fell in love with, and who seemed to him at that time 
far "too good for human nature's daily food," and is somehow so fondly ex- 
pecting that seraphic being, that he experiences an actual shock of surprise 
over the arrival of the woman who does come at last, only to dispute the hack- 
man's charge, to reproach the servants, to complain of the misdoings during 
her interregnum, to set things straight with fury, and to tease for money. 
The merest trifle, in short, when we expect it and it has not yet arrived, 




IN THE WAVE- WASHED SAND. 



(41) 




THE SHIP THAT IS COMING INTO HARBOR 



STEPPING vSTONES TO HAPPINESS. 43 

seems something - better than the truth. Even the bonnet on its way from the 
milliner's is changed in our waiting from a tolerably pretty affair into a be- 
witching and delicate confusion of straw and lace and ribbons and flowers, 
that with some throws a glamor of itself over the commoner bonnet when 
that arrives, and with others utterly annihilates the poor bonnet that falls un- 
der none of its provisions. And so of every other mote in the world — it is 
gold while it swims in the sun ; it is dust when it falls on our arm. 

The pleasures of this expectancy are something that you may see little 
children begin t'o indulge in early. Half of their plays are made of it, and 
this, that, and the other joy and glory are to be theirs when they are big boys 
and girls; when they grow up; when they take off petticoats, forswear knick- 
erbockers, wear long dresses, have a tall hat ; when they are ladies ; when they 
are soldiers; when they go to college; when they have children of their own; 
when the great future arrives, with all that they expect in it. Who of us, 
even in middle life, is not expecting his ship to come in? And who of us 
cannot recall the magnificent expectancy concerning that vague realm of un- 
known labors and rewards which we used to call the great world, and to think 
of as a delightful region into which we should presently be launched, which 
lay always just below the horizon ? And what would life be worth if that 
other world were cut off from it — that world lying just beyond the horizon 
of life, which somehow casts its glory back over this actual world of to-day, 
and serves in our expectancy as perpetual compensation for all the ills and 
wrongs existing here? 

Everybody remembers that child experience of Mrs. Browning, when in 
her sylvan rambles she came across a spot that never seemed the same again, 
if again she ever found it : 

I affirm that since I lost it, 

Never bower has seemed so fair; 
Never garden creeper crossed it 

With so deft and brave an air ; 
Never bird sang in the summer 

As I saw and heard them there. 



A Child's Discovery. 

We recollect, ourselves, a child of our acquaintance who, playing on the 
beach at Newcastle, discovered a deposit of garnets there in the wave-washed 
sand, and ran hallooing up the shore for spades and bags to carry off the 
treasure, and whose dismay was only surpassed by that of the fox whose 
buried goose had been unearthed and stolen by another fox, when, on her 



44 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




IF IT HAD BEEN THE QUEEN A-COMING IN. 



returning full of expectancy, with a quickly assembled party, there was not a 
garnet to be found ; and she would have been deemed guilty of falsehood or 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 45 

of fancy if her little apron full of rough gems had not been witness to her 
veracity, and Hugh Miller had not afterward come to her support with rela- 
tion ot similar facts. So tar from quenching the spirit of expectancy within 
her, the circumstance seemed to stimulate it during all the rest of her life, as 
if time and fate must needs atone for the loss by giving everything else she 
looked for a value beyond itself. 

Many ot our mental processes are as yet quite inscrutable and past finding 
out, and thus it would be of little use to endeavor to say why expectancy so 
doubles the value of consummation. 



Surprise. 

There is a sudden joy and ecstatic heart-beat in the very welcome surprise 
that sometimes overtakes us, but who would exchange it for the long-drawn- 
out sweetness of that expectation in which we count the days, the hours, the 
moments, picture to ourselves the truth, gloat over every item of the coming 
joy, live it and re-live it, and extract the last drop of its deliciousness before 
it is actually here? The surprise is precious, doubtless; it lasts a moment. 
The expectation is equally precious; it lasts for hours. Our heart goes out 
and flies before the ship that is coming into harbor, goes out to greet the guest, 
goes out to receive the blessing, and is doubly dowered with every reasonable 
day^s delay. To expect sorrow, and supreme sorrow, surely to expect it, is as 
wearing and wearying and unendurable as the suffering is when the blow falls ; 
to expect joy, and surely to expect it, is to enjoy it by so much the longer and 
by so much the more exquisitely as it may happen with us that the ideal in 
our being exceeds the real. Thus it may be seen that happy expectation, al- 
most another name tor content, is an important factor in our happiness. I 
suppose it was a lesson ol content in the present and of joy in the future, of 
the delight ot vague expectancy and constant hope, that Mrs Mulgrave had 
when looking at her new house in process of construction, she saw what she 
described as ''Two Sides to a Bureau." 



Mrs. Mulgrave's Story. 

It is Mrs. Jim, however, who speaks first. This is one side of it: You 
must know, she said, that when I turned round and she was coming in the 
door. I'm sure I thought I was dreaming. If it had been the Queen a-com- 
ing in, I shouldn't have been more surprised; and the three children with 



4 6 



vSTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



their three faces like little pigs! "Here, you," whispered I to Benjamin 
Franklin, "you just go 'long and stick your face in some water, quick metre! 
And give Johnny's a scrubbing, too." And I wet the corner of my apron be- 
tween my lips in a hurry, and rubbed Sue's mouth; and then I made believe 
I hadn't seen her before and dusted the other chair for her; and she sat down, 
and I sat down, and we looked at one another. Lord! she was that fine! Her 
flounces were silk, and they were scalloped like so many roses, and lace show- 
ing under the edges of them ; and she had such boots, setting like gloves — just 
enough to make your eyes water. But the flowers in her hat — you should have 
seen them — I declare you could have smelled them ! Well, she seemed to fill 
up the little room, and if ever I was glad of anything, I was glad that I'd 
scrubbed the fleer that very day, so that it was clean enough to eat off of — 
glad, too, that I'd taken Jim's old hat out of the broken window and put in 
the smooth bottom of a box with a good respectable-looking tack. Jim might 
have mended that window, fcr he's a perfect Jack-at-all trades; but he'd 
rather play the fiddle than eat, and he was a-playing it out in the tie-up that 
moment, with all the wind there was blowing. However, I couldn't complain, 
for he'd just mended the chair, so that it was almost as good as new, and had 
put me up as tidy a shelf as you please over the stove for the brush and comb 
and the hair-oil bottle. If I'd been a little slicked up myself, with my new 
print and my pink apron, or if I'd enly had my bang on, I wouldn't a-minded. 

But when Benjamin Franklin came back 
with just the top dirt rinsed off, and the rest 
all smears, I did feel so vexed that I gave 
him as good a shaking as a nut-tree gets in 
harvest. 

' ' Bless my heart ! ' ' says she, ' ' what are you 
doing that for?" 

"Because he's so aggravating," says I. 
'There, you go 'long; ' and I gave him a 
shove. 

14 Why,'" says she, "don't you remember 
how it used to feel to be shaken yourself?" 
"1 don't know as I do,"' says I. 
"As if you were flying to atoms? And 
your body was as powerless as if it had been 
dn the hands of a giant, and your heart as 
(full of hate? ' 

"Why, look a-here," says I. 'Be you a 
you couldn't shut a drawer, missionary?" 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



47 







# r *c-)f- 



THAT SEA VIEW WOULD BE GOOD AS A PICTURE 

" A missionary?" says she, laughing 'No, I m Mr. Mulgrave's wife. 
And I came up to see how the new house was getting on ; but the house is so 
full of plaster dust inside and the whirlwind is blowing the things off the 
roof, so outside, that I thought I would venture in here till the cloud passed." 

"Oh," says I. 

"I knocked, but you didn't hear me." 



48 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"I'm real glad to see you," says I. "It's a dreadful lonesome place, and 
hardly anybody ever comes. Only I'm sorry everything's so at sixes and 
sevens. You see, where there's a family of children, and the wind blowing 
so," says I, with a lucky thought — it's always good to have the wind or the 
weather to lay things to, because nobody's responsible for the elements — 
"things will get to looking like ride-out." 

"Children do make confusion," says she; "but confusion is pleasanter 
with them than pimlico order without them." 

"Well, that's so," I answered; "for I remember when Johnny had the 
measles last year I thought if he only got well I'd let him whittle the door all 
to pieces if ever he wanted to again. Here, Benny," says I, for I began to 
feel bad to think I'd treated him so — if he'd mortified me, 'twas no reason 
why I should mortify him, and right before folks so — "take that to little sis- 
ter," and I gave them something to keep them quiet. "I suppose you 
wouldn't care for any water?" says I to her then. "Not if I put some mo- 
lasses in it? I didn't know but the wind would have made you dry. Yes, 
children do make trouble. One of Jim's songs says, 

'Marriage does bring trouble; 

A single life is best ; 
They should never double 

Who would be at rest.' 

But there! I wouldn't be without them for all the fine clothes I used to have 
when I was single and worked in the shop I worked down at Burrage's — 
I suppose you never buy shoes there any ?' 

"What makes you suppose so?" says she, smiling. 

"Well, because your boots don't look like our work; they look like — like 
Cinderella's slippers. Yes, I worked at Burrage's, off and on, a good many 
years — on most of the time. I had six dollars a week. Folks used to wonder 
how I got so many clothes with it, after I'd paid my board. But I always 
had that six dollars laid out long before pay-day — in my mind, you know — so 
that I spent it to the best advantage. There's a great deal of pleasure in that, ! ' 

"A great deal/' says she. 

"That's what I say to Jim ; and then he says his is all spent before pay- 
day, too — but with a difference, you know. I suppose you've got a real good, 
steady husband?" 

"Oh, yes, indeed," says she, laughing some more. 

"You must, to have such a nice house as that is going to be. But there! 
I shouldn't know what to do with it, and I don't envy you a bit." 

'Oh, you needn't," says she, a-twitching her shoulder; "I expect to have 
trouble enough with it." 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 



49 




WAS THE MOST UNHAPPY WOMAN, 



"Not," says I — "I don't mean that Jim isn't steady. He's as steady as 
a clock — at that old fiddle of his. But sometimes I do wish he loved his 
regular trade as well, or else that that was his trade. But I suppose if fiddling 
was his trade, he'd want to be wood carving all the time." 
"Why don't ycu speak to him," says she, "seriously?" 
"Well, ycu can't," says I. "He's so sweet and good-natured and 
pleasant that when I've got my mind all made up to give him a sound 
talking to, he makes me like him so and sets me to laughing and 



5 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

plays such a twirling, twittering tune, that I can't do it to save my 
life." 

You see, I'd got to talking rather free with her, because she listened so, 
and seemed interested, and kept looking at me in a wondering way, and at 
last took Sue up on her lap and gave her her rings to play with. Such rings! 
My gracious! one of them flashed with stones all round, just like the Milky 
Way. I should think it would have shone through her glove. 

"But," says she, "ycu should tell him that his children will be growing 
tip presently, and" 

"Oh, I do that," says I. "And he says, well, he'll do for the bad exam- 
ple they're to take warning by; and, at any rate, it's no use worrying before 
the time comes, and when they do grow up they can take care of themselves 
just the way we do. " 

"And are you contented to leave it so?" says she. 

"Well, I'm contented enough. That is, in general. But I do wish some- 
times that Jim would go down to his work regular every day, with his tin 
pail in his hand, like other men, and come back at night, and have a good 
round sum of money in hand at once, instead of just working long enough to 
get some flour and fish and pork and potatoes and sugar, and then not so 
much as lifting his finger again till that all gives out; it's such a hand-to- 
mouth way of living," says I. "And of course we can't get things together, 
such as a rocking-chair, and a sofa, and a good-sized looking-glass, and an 
eight-day clock. Not that I care much; only when a lady like you happens in 
I'd like to give her a seat that's softer. And there's a bureau. Now you 
wouldn't believe it, but I've never owned a bureau. " 

"Indeed," says she. 

"Yes. I don't think it's good manners to be always apologizing about 
the looks of a place; and so I don't say anything about all the boxes and 
bundles I have to keep my things in, that do give a littery look; but I am 
always meaning to have a bureau to put them in, if I can compass it ever. 
You see, it's hard getting so much money in a pile; and if I do happen to, 
why then there's something I must have, like Jim's boots, or flannel and 
yarn and cloth, or a little bed — because you can't sleep with more than two 
children in one bed. And so, somehow, I never get the bureau. But then I 
don't give it up. Oh, I suppose you think my notions are dreadful extrava- 
gant," says I, for she was looking at me perfectly amazed; really, just as if I 
was a little monster, and she'd never seen the like. "And perhaps they are. 
But people must have something to ambition them, and it seems to me as 
though, if I ever could get a bureau, I should 'most feel as if I'd got a house!" 

"Well, I declare!" says she, drawing of a long breath. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 51 

"I did come precious near it last fall," says I — for I wanted her to see 
that it wasn't altogether an impossibility, and I wasn't wasting my time in 
vapors — "when Jim was at workup here, helping lay out the garden. He 
was paid by the day, you know; Mr. Mulgrave paid him; and he was paid 
here, and I had the handling of the money; and I said to myself, 'Now or 
never for that bureau!' But, dear me, I had to turn that money over so many 
times to get the things I couldn't do without any way at all, that before I got 
round to the bureau it was every cent gone!" 

Yes," she says, "it's apt to be so. I know if I don't get the expensive 
thing when I have the money in my purse, the money is frittered away and 
I've nothing to show for it. " 

"That's just the way it is with me," says I. "But somehow I can't seem 
to do without the shoes and flannel, and all that. Oh, here's your husband! 
That's a powerful horse of his. But I should be afraid he'd break my neck if 
I was behind him." 

"Not when my husband's driving," says she. And she bids me good- 
day, and kisses Sue, and springs into the wagon, and is off like a bird, with 
her veil and her feathers and her ribbons and streamers all flying. 

Well, so far so good. Thinks I to myself : "She'll be a very pleasant neigh- 
bor. If she's ever so fine, she don't put on airs. And it does you good once 
in a while to have somebody listen when you want to run on about yourself. 
And maybe she'll have odd chores that I can turn my hand to — plain sewing, 
or clear-starching, or an extra help when company comes in. I shouldn't 
wonder if we were quite a mutual advantage." And so I told Jim, and he 
said he shouldn't wonder, too. 

Well, that evening, just at sunset — now I'm telling you the real truth 
and if you don't believe me, there it is to speak for itself — Jim was a-playing 
"Roslin Castle," and I was a-putting Sue to sleep, when I happened to lookout 
the window, and there was a job wagon coming straight up the hill, with 
something in it that had a great canvas hanging over it. "It's a queer time 
o' day," says I to myself, "to be bringing furniture into Mr. Mulgrave's house, 
and it not half done, either. But it s none of my business. Maybe it's a 
refrigerator to be set in the cellar." And I went on patting Sue, when all at 
once Jim's fiddle stopped short, as if it broke, and I heard a gruff voice say- 
ing, "Where'll you have it? Here, you, sir, lend a hand." And I dropped 
Sue on the bed and ran to the door, and they were a-bringing it in — there, 
look at it, as pretty a bureau as you'll find in a day's walk. It's pine, to be 
sure, but it's seasoned, and every drawer shuts smooth and easy; and it's 
painted and grained, like black-walnut, and there's four deep drawers, and a 
shallow one at the bottom, and two little drawers at the top ; and in the upper 



5 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

drawer of the deep ones there's a place for this all parted off, and a place for 
that, and a place for the other; and, to crown the whole, a great swinging 
glass that you can see yourself in from head to belt. Just look' Oh, I tell 
you it's a great thing. "With Mrs. Mulgrave's compliments, " says the man, 
and went off and shut the door. 

I never waited for anything. Sue was screaming on the bed ; I let her 
scream. I never minded Benny's rassling nor Jim's laughing. I got down 
every bandbox and basket and bundle I had on the shelves, got out every bag 
there was under the bed and behind the doors, and in ten minutes that bureau 
was so full you couldn't shut a drawer. Then I took them all out and fixed 
them all over again. "It's ours, Jim! "says I; and then I just sat down 
and cried. 



The Other Side of the Bureau. 

"Well, Lawrence, I'm so glad you've come! I thought you never would. 
And I've had such a lesson read me!" 

"Lesson? Who's been reading my wife a lesson, I should like to know?" 
"Who do you think ? Nobody but that little absurd woman there — that Mrs. 
Jim. But I never had such a lesson. Drive slow, please, and let me tell you 
all about it — this horse does throw the gravel in your face so! I'm expecting 
every moment to see the spokes fly out of the wheels There, now, that's 
reasonable. This horse is a perfect griffin — has legs and wings, too." 

"Well — steady, Frolic, steady' — now let's ha^e your lesson. If there's 
any one can read you a lesson, Mrs. Fanny Mulgrave, I should like to hear it" 

"Now, Lawrence! However, you know 1 came up to lock at the house, 
for I've been having my misgivings about that big room. And when I went 
in, it did look so big and bare! I was dismayed. I paced it off this way and 
paced it off that way, and thought about what I could put in the corners; and 
how that window with the sea view would be as good as a picture; and how 
the whole mantel-piece from dado to cornice, with its white marble carvings 
and gildings and mirror, was a perfect illumination; and how J must con- 
front it in that great square alcove with a mass of shadow • and we haven ' t a sin- 
gle thing to go there; and how magnificent an ebony and gold cabinet like that 
Mrs. Watrous and I saw at the Exhibition — the one 1 went into ecstasies 
over, you know, that goes from floor to ceiling — would fill the place. And the 
more I thought of it, the more indispensable such a great ebony and gilt cabi- 
net seemed to be. And I knew it was perfectly impossible"— — 

"How did you know it, may 1 inquire?" 




DWELLING UPON THE SPIRITUAL. 



54 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

4 'Oh, they cost — oh, hundreds of dollars. And, of course the house itself 
takes all you can spare. But I felt that it would be utterly out of my power 
to make that room look anything like what I wanted without it. And I kept 
seeing how beautiful it would be with those gold colored satin curtains of your 
aunt Sophy's falling back from the windows on each side of it. And I sat 
down and stared at the spot, and felt as if I didn't want the house at all if I 
couldn't have that cabinet. And I thought you might go without your cigars 
and your claret and your horses a couple of years, and we could easily have it. " 

"Kind of you, and cheerful for me." 

"Oh, I didn't think anything about that part of it. Just fancy! I 
thought you were the most selfish man in the world, and I was the most un- 
happy woman; and all men w r ere selfish, and all women were slaves; and — 
and that ebony and gold cabinet w T as obscuring my whole outlook on life. I 
felt so angry with you, and with fate, and with everything, that hot, scalding- 
hot tears would have shaken down if you had happened to come just then. 
I'm so glad you didn't, Lawrence, dear; I couldn't have spoken to save my 
life, and I should have run directly out of the room for fear, if I did speak, I 
should say something horrid. ' 

"Should you, indeed? And do you imagine I shouldn't have followed?" 

"Oh, I should have been running." 

"And whose legs are longest, puss?" 

"Well, that's nothing to do with it. Just then the whirlwind came up, 
and the window-places being open, all the dust of the building, all the shav- 
ings and splinters and lime and sand about, seemed to make a sudden lurch 
into the room, and I couldn't see across it. And there I was in my new hat! 
And I made for the door as fast as my feet could fly." 

"Silliest thing you could do." 

"I suppose so; for when I was out-doors, the boards on the scaffoldings 
were pitching through the air at such a rate that I could neither stay there 
nor go back; and I saw that little shanty just round the corner, and ran in." 

"That was sensible." 

"Thanks. And there she was, pots and pails about the door, and a hen just 
blowing in before me, and a parcel of dirty-faced, barefooted children tum- 
bling round. And such a place! It fairly made me low-spirited to look at it. 
I was -in mortal fear of getting a grease spot on my dress. But I was in be- 
fore I knew it, and there w r as no help for it, and the wind was blowing so I 
had to stay. 

"And the lady of that house read you a lesson?" 

"Such a lesson! You'd have thought, to begin w T ith, that it was a palace. 
She did the honors like a little duchess. It didn't occur to her, apparently, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 55 

that things were squalid. And that made it so much easier than if she apolo- 
gized, and you were forced to tell polite fibs and make believe it was all right, 
you know. She was a trifle vexed because the face of one of the children 
wasn't clean, and afterward she repentingly gave him the molasses jug to 
keep him quiet; but another of the children was such a little darling! Well, 
presently her tongue was loose. " 

"Humph!" 

"Humph? Didn't you want to hear about it? Oh, I know the whole story 
of my tongue, but I find you like to listen to it. " 

"So I do, my dear; so I do. And then?" 

"Well, as I was saying, presently her tongue was loose, and I had the 
benefit of her experience. And I know she has a good-for-naught of a hus- 
band, whom she loves a great deal better than I love you — oh yes she does, 
for she seems never to have thought one hard thing concerning him, and I 
was thinking so many of you, you know! And there she is, and has been, 
with her cooking- stove and table, her two chairs, a bed, and a crib, with a con- 
tented spirit and a patient soul, and her highest ambition and her wildest day- 
dream just to have" 

"An ebony and gold cabinet?" 

"Oh, no, no! Do drive faster, Lawrence. How this horse does crawl' 
I want to get it up to her to-night. A bureau. To think of it, only a bureau! 
You needn't laugh at me. I've an awful cold in my head. And I mean she shall 
have it, if it takes every cent you gave me for my new jacket. I'll wear the 
old one. I think I can get what she'll consider a beauty, though, for twelve 
dollars, or thereabouts. Drive to Veneer's, please, dear. I do feel in such a 
hurry, when it takes such a little bit to make a woman happy. " 

"An ebony and gold cabinet, for instance. '* 

"Oh, nonsense! How you do love to tease, Lawrence! I never want to 
hear of such a thing again. I wouldn't have it now." 

"Stop, stop, goodwife! You'll say too much. You silly little woman, 
didn't you know that ebony and gold cabinet which you and Mrs. Watrous 
saw was made for the place between your windows?" 




5 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER THIRD. 



A Pause By the Way. 

Who know to Jive and know to die, 
Their souls are sale, tneir triumph nigh. 

— Anon. 

Who sweeps a room as to God's law 
Makes that and the action fine, 

— Herbert 

I 'ever content yourself with doing your second best. 

— Gen. Phil. Sheridan. 

Has made me King! Now in my new estate 
What duties must I do, what honors bear? 
More than all men the King must feel the weight 
Of constant self-restraint, of watchful care ; 
Beneath his firm control his passions bring. 
And rule himself if he would be a King. 

-S. M. Day. 

But Pallas where she stood 
Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs 
O'er thwarted with the brazen-headed spear 
Upon the pearly shoulder leaning coid. 
The while, alone, her full and earnest eye 
Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek 
Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. 
"Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
Yet not for pewer (power of herself 
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
Acting the law we live by without fear; 
And, because right is right, to follow right. 
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." 

— Ten7iyson. 



Self-Reliance and Self-Reverence. 

We should do poorly with our content with life as it is, if we did not find 
one of the strongest and firmest of our stepping-stones as we cross the stream 
to our shining goal of happiness, in the habit of self-reliance and self-rever- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



57 




THE SWEET INFLUENCE OF A LOVING SYMPATHY. 



ence. The eloquent preacher Whitefield is reported to have asked Ten 
nant: " Do you not rejoice that your time is so near at hand, when you 
will be called home and freed from all the difficulties ot this checkered 
scene? 

44 No," was the reply. "My business is to live as long as I can, as well as I 



58 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

can, and to serve my Lord and Master as faithfully as I can, until He shall 
think proper to call me home." 

The aged saint knew that to every one is appointed his place and duty, 
and that he is to fill it and to fulfil it till relieved, and that thus his character 
is developed and strengthened. "The greater the power of thought in any 
individual," some one has said, "the greater is his spontaneous action; and 
the greater the spontaneous action the more completely will he live and be. 
A thousand influences lie in wait to ensnare mortal man. The whole world is 
an influence. The strongest of all is individual character. Character makes 
the man. Man can boast of nothing as his own, except .the energy which he 
displays. If unable to arouse this energy let him assume it, let him place 
himself by a sudden effort in circumstances where he must will." Character 
then is developed by doing and not by dreaming. 



St. Augustine's Dream. 

When St. Augustine determined to give three days and nights to prayer 
and meditation concerning the deep mystery of the Trinity, on the third night 
he was very naturally overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamed that he 
was walking by the sea, where a child had made a hole in the sand with his 
tiny heel and then pouring water into it from a shell he held in his little hand. 
"What dost thou?" said St. Augustine. "I am pouring the sea into this 
hole," said the boy. "That cannot be done, my child," said the saint, with 
a pitying smile. Then all at once a gleam of heaven shone in the child's eyes 
— it was no longer a child. "I can do that, Augustine, " he said, with a 
mighty voice, "as readily as thou canst understand the nature of thy thoughts 
and of the Trinity." 



The Spiritual Mind. 

But this does not imply that one should not dwell upon spiritual thoughts 
at the proper time, should not, in effect, be more spiritually minded than any- 
thing else, for to be spiritually minded is to have a sense, a conviction, an as- 
sured knowledge of the reality, solidity and security of spiritual things. "To 
find in the unseen region of a heavenly existence a source of motive power, 
a vast auxiliary, an inexhaustible reservoir of strength, coming in aid of nat- 
ural conscience, which alone is insufficient to direct or reclaim us, but which we 
enforce from the divine works, irresistibly triumphs with our first moral 




A HAPPY FACE DOES A SERVICE TO HUMANITY 



6o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

victory. A supreme uncreated excellence and glory must haunt, elevate, 
sanctify, and draw us to another citizenship than that which we hold amid 
these clay-built abodes, before the spiritual mind ; which is life and peace, can 
be unfolded within us." Apropos of this, it is Bishop Huntingdon who says 
"that spiritual serenity is spiritual strength; it comes in by no softness of sen- 
timent, but by thorough work. It comes by a faith that emboldens and en- 
ergizes the whole soul " Spiritual or not, every one has his own lite to live, 
and to live alone, alone as he came into being, alone as he will go out into 
the next stage of being. ''There is something awful in this terrible solitude 
if we look at it. . . . One may indeed strive to break in upon the stillness of 
our solitary being, by crowding others around us, by the tever of excite- 
ment, or the sweet influence of a loving sympathy, but in ail the pauses of out- 
ward things the solemn voice comes back and the vision ot our single, proper, 
solitary being overshadows the spirits. We have each one this burden of a 
separate soul, and we must bear it. How do all deep -thinking persons, even 
in the daily routine, live apart from others, and more or less feel that they do 
so. Even ordinary life hears voices which add their witness to the truth if 
we will listen to them." 1 It is in this inner solitude in which we all live that 
our habit of self-respect, ot something more, of self-reverence, takes rise. 



Reticence. 



We cultivate it at first, very like, by a fit and proper reticence. We re- 
member that the world is not very much interested in our especial suffering or 
joy, and that our haps and mishaps have not the interest ot romances to other 
people. There are, indeed, let us say by the way, many sorrows and troubles of 
which the old proverb, v ' least said soonest mended,'' holds true. There are 
some things best hidden in secret receptacles with the lid shut down, rather 
than aired in the sight of all. Whoever wears a happy face does a service to 
humanity ; for it is infinitely better that the world should seem full of sunshine 
than of gloom, that the general heart should be lifted in gratitude rather than 
abased with rankling injury; and happiness meanwhile, or its semblance, be- 
gets happiness, like a dollar at usury, and enriches the moral world as sun- 
shine does the earth. Those who go about baring their private woes might 
learn, if they were able to lose the thread of their discourse tor one moment, that 
most of the rest of the race are busy with the thread of their own discourses, 
and that although they turn to listen to a plaint and even to give a share of 
sympathy and pity, it is quite as a matter aside, an affair as much of self- 
respect as of respect for us, and they are presently hurrying on with their own 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



61 




WE ARE MOST OF US INCLINED TO SYMPATHIZE. 



interest again almost as indifferently as Nature herself seems to hurry. 
But even allowing that the sympathy is very great, given for a long time, 
without stint, and actively felt, there comes an end to all things, and perpet- 
ual draughts must only reach the lees of that. If one is going to demand 
sympathy forever, one should be very careful as to the manner in which it is 
demanded, as it is no impossible thing to wear out the patience even of these 
who love us most, 



62 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Real Troubles. 

Real troubles can never fail to receive the tribute of warm and enduring 
compassion; but real troubles do not last forever, nor are they the ones con- 
cerning- which the most rout is made, for deep sorrow is apt to seek to wrap 
itself in silence, and of the literally cureless diseases of the body, these the 
sufferer conceals to the last possible moment, and those, by the very fever they 
excite in the blood, kindle cheerfulness. We are so constituted, both physi- 
cally and spiritually, that, under too heavy a burden for us to bear, we sink 
and fail ; and real trouble of any amount wears us out, be it of body or of soul, 
before any great lapse of time, and puts an end to any need of sympathy — 
wears us out before we have a chance to wear patience out. It is, except for 
very rare and phenomenal cases, the unreal troubles, the actually slight ones, 
those to be in some measure avoided, mitigated, or overlooked, that are spread 
before other people with loudest iteration and demand for sympathy. 

This is especially to be noticed in cases of partial illness, where much dis- 
comfort is experienced, some pain, great weariness, perhaps, yet not positive 
danger; but you will observe that where there is an invalid suffering such 
illness, no guest enters the door who is not hospitably entreated with a detailed 
account of that invalid's least symptoms — and, unless the guest be nurse or 
physician, to what result? It is even then ten to one if the ccmplainer be 
well listened to, the first words having recalled some similar instance in the 
guest's experience, impatience to recount which, according to the very same 
tendency, dulls the ear to all the rest of the sickly recital. It is perhaps ex- 
ceedingly sad and dreary to be obliged to suffer as this invalid does ; we pity 
greatly; but when the invalid still lives on, growing no worse, we sometimes 
feel obliged to husband our resources, and to question if good taste would not 
try to wear the bright face instead of saddening the world with the darkest 
side. In reality, we are most of us inclined to sympathize generously with 
sorrow, with injustice, with pain ; but the instinct of self-preservation pre- 
vents our being able, if we are willing, to endure a too prolonged strain, and 
it may be pronounced as an axiom that the individual receives the best and 
surest sympathy who makes the least outcry, and bears the sad lot with 
fortitude. 

It is a little singular, withal, tnat the possessors of these numerous pri- 
vate woes — private ? one should rather say public ! — so frequently forget com- 
mon self-respect. What would the same individuals sa) r of the beggar who 
goes about showing his sores? And are they doing any differently? Are 
they not exhibiting a corresponding sort of uncleanness, the same want of 
modesty and shame, making themselves, as far as in them lies, and with the 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 63 

mere difference — and not always that — that exists between the ills of body 
and mind, as loathsome in all comparative degree? 

The chief thing to be done in this regard by those who consider them- 
selves the victims of any remarkable affliction is always to remember that, 
in spite of all kindness shown, nobody is so interesting to another as he is 
to himself, and that dignity requires one to keep one's sorrows, as well as 
one's joys, rather sacred than otherwise. As a rule, in the ecstasies of our 
great happiness or our great grief, we prefer to be alone. Why in our small 
happinesses and small griefs do we need so much more companionship? It 
seems as if one must, after all, be the possessor of a very reassuring amount 
of vanity to suppose that one should receive more consideration or consolation 
from one's acquaintances than Job did from his friends. 

If keeping our woes to ourselves is one help to self-respect, another is the 
habit of taking life as it comes, sure that it is the best for us that comes, that 
we are not inferior wretches in the divine eyes, but that we are here to per- 
form an appointed part. We will not then spend time in waiting for a path 
to open for us: "We will go ahead and open it." "By doing my own work," 
says Ruskin, "poor as it may seem to some, I shall better fulfil God's end in 
making me what I am, and more truly glorify His name than if I were either 
going out of my own sphere to do the work of another, or calling another into 
my sphere to do my proper work for me." 



The Armor of Patience. 

There are people to be sure, who may not open the path, to 
whom it is appointed to wait. "They also serve who only stand 
and wait," said the blind poet. And we shall find those who really 
seem to have little else to do than to wait: perhaps they lost their 
places early in this great procession of travelers from one darkness to another, 
and so nothing comes to them at the appointed time; they wait for love, for 
home, for happiness, for work, for wealth, for fame ; usually they wait in 
vain, and at last they have only to wait for death. Whether it is owing to 
some of the cross purposes of fate that these people are so unfortunate, or 
whether it is the fault of their own organism that they have failed to profit by 
occasion, there is always something very pathetic about the thought of their 
unsatisfied lot. Others of us know something of the annoyances of waiting, 
are acquainted with the impatience, the nervousness, the disappointment, if 
not anger, the vexation of vainly expecting some trifle that in reality is unim- 
portant; some of us know the misery of waiting for those who do not return; 



64 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

every one has listened for desired footsteps, heard them coming from afar, 
heard them go by ; and if such waiting be misery, we can paint to ourselves 
what a lifetime of waiting is. Of course, with the patient sufferers there is 
not the poignancy of acute disappointment in a matter of pressing present in- 
terest, such as that where hangs the life or welfare of a beloved one, or the 
pivot of our personal fortunes ; but with them it is one dull expectancy, one 
long ache ; other waitings come to an end, but this knows neither the pierc- 
ing pang of certain sorrow and denial, nor ever any sudden lifting of gratifica- 
tion and content. The outlook, the hopes, the experience, narrows as chance 
never arrives, and fruition never happens, and they who look at the enduring 
patience of one thus waiting are sure that, if for no other reason, there must 
needs be an immortality in order to do justice to those thus wronged of what 
their soul most craves, although they have everything else in the world. For 
it is of no consequence to any what else they have in the world if they have 
not the one precise thing wanted. He who wants the hymns of Homer can 
not be put off with the Mecanique Celeste, or, to go from great to less, it makes 
no odds to the woman who has no gloves that she has two dozen handker- 
chiefs; under no conditions will she who longs for a home of her own be quite 
satisfied with the home of other people, and he who wishes for recognition of 
genius does not care to be pointed out for his fine eyes. He waits foi recog- 
nition ; she waits for love and home ; another waits for a chance of self-educa- 
tion ; another for freedom from a hated bond ; and whether they wait all their 
lives, or get the desire at last, while they are waiting it is pitiful. It seems 
as if there were not happiness enough in this world to go round. "There's 
chairs enough," said the suddenly inundated country host, c 'but there's too 
much company;" and in this case there is no help for it but that some must 
go to the wall and wait. 

Possibly there are some of these waiting ones who are waiting for some- 
thing more serious than any of the small affairs of the daily paths, who await 
an answer to the great riddle of life, for the first glimpse of the things beyond, 
and have girded themselves with the armor of patience, till sight and knowl- 
edge shall be vouchsafed ; and others there are who, undisturbed by such emo- 
tion, wait only for the leading of the power that rules the universe to do the 
will of that power, and help onward its work ; and yet others who, all hope of 
further helping over, fold their hands and wait only for the word that gives 
them the freedom of the eternal city. But all such are waiting in good com- 
pany — they wait with the hosts who stand with folded wings about heaven's 
throne. 

If there is something lofty in this sainted waiting, not for the blisses of 
this life, but for the communion of saints beyond, all the other waiting dc- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 65 

pends for its merit upon the spirit- in which it is taken. If it is quarrelsome, 
petulant, impatient, we fail to be touched by it; if it is idle and shiftless it 
renders us indignant, and disapproval almost destroys pity; if it is, on the 
whole, merely a waiting for opportunity to come, as the boy waited for the 
river to flow by that he might cross, unaware that opportunity is almost 
always in the passing moment if we have the knack of seizing it, it receives 
only a pity that is too near contempt to be pleasant. 

Yet it behooves us, be the waiting of what sort it may, to keep some 
sparks of a better pity undestroyed, as we hope for it ourselves, for in one 
shape or another we are all of us waiting for something that in all our three- 
score years and ten we fail to find. 



A Mutual Dependence. 

Although we must stand alone in the spiritual life, we can not stand alone 
in the material one, for life is like a great interwoven fabric where one thread 
holds another. Think of the way in which all the relations of our social life 
are complicated, so that no one lives in the civilized world who is not doing 
something for some one else, either physically or intellectually or spiritually, 
paying rent, it might be said, for the lease of life. The bad are pulling down 
the good, the good are lifting up the bad, the poor are working for the rich, 
the rich are spending for the poor, and even the baby of the pauper is creating 
a demand that some one must supply. 

The wealthy woman stepping from her stone mansion to her carriage is 
an illustration, in her mere material affairs, of the way in which all humanity 
works together, and works for each member of itself. To say nothing of 
those influences that have shaped her heart and soul, how many workers have 
contributed to send her abroad in the guise in which she appears? to how 
many workers has she contributed a fractional support? The quarry-man has 
wrought the stone for the mansion; the kiln-man has burned the brick; the 
woodman has felled the lumber ; the miner has sent the iron and lead ; carpen- 
ter and turner, mason and blacksmith and marble-worker and plumber, and 
alL the kindred trades, have been at her service. The watchman has patrolled 
the street at night for her soft slumbers in that mansion; the laborer has made 
that street, and has cleaned it; the lamp-lighter has lighted the gas before it; 
powerful officials, learned doctors of the boards of health, committees of the 
city government, have seen that all this was properly done, and she has paid 
her stipend to assessors, recorders, and receivers of taxes for having it done. 
Slaughterers, leather-dressers, carriage-makers, again, have afforded her the 



66 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

coach into which she steps; some one of the old countries, or rather the influ- 
ences working there, have probably sent her coachman and footman ; the far- 
mer, who supplies much on her table, has raised her horses. And for that 
same table has the vaquero driven the herd of steers that came sweeping up 
from bayou and prairie of the far New Mexican and Texan regions; have 
flocks of fowl been brought from the Northwest ; have fruits been pulled in 
the tropics, and sweetmeats been sent from the East; has the fisher in the 
Columbia taken salmon, and the Hindoo on the bank of the Ganges sent hot 
sauces; has the peasant of the Rhine tended his grapes, and pressed the must. 
Look then at her array: the negro has bent under the sun picking the cotton 
that enters into some portion of it; the flax-raiser has been in her employ ; 
the barefooted Irish girl at heme has turned the woven linen for her in sun 
and dew; the maidens of France have tended the silkworms for her, and reeled 
the cocoons; the shuttles have tossed to and fro for her in the looms of Lyons; 
swarthy Orientals have squatted at their rude frames embellishing the rich 
stuffs she folds about her; while slaves in the diamond mines have dug and 
delved for her at one side of the globe, and fishermen have stripped the seal 
at the other. For her, too, have the keels of ships been laid, to bring her 
these silks and cashmeres and furs and jewels; for her have sailors braved the 
mid-ocean storms, have pilots gone out to bring the ships to port through curl- 
ing breakers ; for her the watcher in his solitary sea-washed tower kindles the 
light-house lamp each evening on the edge of dark. For her, too, have the 
shining lines of railway steel been laid, and the trains led thundering over 
them by engineer and fireman, bringing her fineries and dainties; for her has 
the daily paper been struck off, with editor, reporter, and printer on her pay- 
roll ; for her delectation did the morning news run at midnight over the tele- 
graph wires; for her safety has the sentinel paced all night on the lonely sea- 
wall in the harbor defense, and have bodies of troops been moved up and 
down on the frontier haunted by the tomahawk. For her pleasure has the in- 
spiration of the musician come, has painter painted, and statuary carved ; 
has the performer spent weary hours of practice with his instrument; has the 
actor plodded through his lines, the dancer through her steps, before the cur- 
tain rises on the scene where all joy and suffering are fused in swift sparkle 
and beauty For her the judge sits on his bench to administer justice; for 
her even the chief of the nation holds the reins of power, and one might say 
that for her all the nations of the earth exist, and kings and queens and em- 
perors sit upon their thrones. And to each and all of these, from peasant to 
prince, who thus work for her she pays tribute, and is, in turn, their feuda- 
tory. She can not do without them, as they can not do without her; her life 
is their life, her wishes give them their wishes. And what is true of the rich 




THE GOOP ARE LIFTING UP THE BAD. (67) 



mm 



68 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

woman is true of the poor woman as well. For although she have not a dol- 
lar but what she earns with her hard and pitiful laundry-work, she does not 
spend it without receiving service and paying tribute also to all the crafts and 
trades that supply her needs, and the radius in which she is felt is just as the 
circle of her wants is wide or narrow, and the rich woman is her ''bound 
woman" again, for one furnishes the other with the clean linen that she wants, 
and one furnishes the other with the money that she wants! With the un- 
equal fortune of the two there is also a mutual dependence. 

And if the dependence is so intimate in purely material things, how close 
is it in things of the spiritual domain, in the mental and moral world. What 
surmise and suspicion of evil does not swing from one to another in scandal, 
till it mows down its swath before it ? What theft, in the simple injury of the 
loss of the loser, does not entail trouble passing again from one to another, 
and in the injury of the crime to the taker does not entail other trouble on all 
with whom his degradation comes in contact, not only in his diminished 
power to do good, but in his increased aptitude to do evil ? What wicked 
thought can prompt the speaking of a wicked word that its vibration shall not 
cause the air to thrill, and make some other voice its echo? For we can 
neither do nor think wrong without injuring, in degree — as the cuttle-fish 
darkens the water about him — all those within the limit of our influence. Let 
us be ever so much accountable to fate and to our consciences as separate 
individuals, we are yet more certainly congregated and bound together in one 
great circulation and interchange than the atoms of some vast polyp building 
its coral reef in the South Pacific, and every one's self-respect and reverence 
must have its effect upon the individuality of every other soul. 



Man's Majesty. 

There are, however, those who call themselves philosophers to whom self- 
reverence, in any high degree, seems as futile as any of their early hopes and 
dreams, since they consider the human race and its concerns to be only among 
the smaller affairs of the universe. These people declare that there is some- 
thing a little mortifying to their vanity in the sense of the insignificance of 
the human race which almost invariably overcomes them when they see it in 
a mass. Not, be it understood, when they see it in the roaring, turbulent 
mass of an infuriated mob; then it assumes, indeed, some of the greatness of 
elemental forces, and swells and surges like the sea, with one wave fortifying 
another; but in the common stream of population going to and fro upon 
a thousand pitiful small errands along some thoroughfare. Watching this 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



69 



stream for any length of time, it irresistibly occurs 
to them that just so the ants go and come with their 
little burdens, their wealth of grains of wheat and 
barley bigger than themselves, just so their soldiers 
march to battle, just so their slaves toil en at home; 
and they half won- 
der if to any su- 
perior eyes that 
chance to rest on 
us we can be of 
more consequence 
than these ants are 
in our own. At 
the same time they 
confess that it is 
odd that recur- 
rence and multi- 
tude should make 
small and common 
that which in the 
single and isolated 
instance is often 
found to be grand 
and uncommon — 
in the great sena- 
tor, mighty sol- 
dier, singing poet, 
lovely woman. Yet 
we have only to 
take the separate 
features of any of 

these isolated instances of humanity — say, the malcontents — to find the same 
sensation recurring, and to feel assured that if man be made in the image of 
any thing divine, it is his inner and spiritual body, and not all the varying 
eyes and ears and noses. For if it were one of these, even so much as one ear, 
for example, which one, of all that we meet? This little curled, pink-rimmed, 
and shell-like ear of the maiden, with its jeweled tip, this pair that stand out 
on either side of the head like vase handles, these that remind one of the an- 
swer of the worthy who, on being asked if the story he was about to relate 
was fit for the auditor's ears, replied that they were long enough, or those 




TO EVERY EARNEST, STRIVING SOUL. 



■^■1 



7 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

where old age, as it too often does, has smoothed out all the charming" whorls 
and creases, and left only a large flat surface of cartilage, those that hold 
themselves pricked up, alert companions, as if they meant no whisper should 
escape them, those pinned back so flatly that what goes in on one side may 
easily come out at the other, those that wag as the scalp moves, those that 
have the pointed segment of the faun's ear, those that are lobeless, or 
those that project themselves into space like a trumpet? Yet when one 
can find so much in the mere outward guise of so small a portion of the 
frame, so tiny a member as the ear, and is aware that its inner construc- 
tion is so complicated and delicate with vibrant membrane and laby- 
rinthine passage, it is not easy to recur to such a fancy as that of the insig- 
nificance of the owner of such an instrument. No! Man who has dared, 
and who has been given the power to dare, to search almighty secrets, to 
weigh the sun, to catch the colors of the elements from which stars are made, 
is a being of importance in the creative eyes, and he owes a debt of self- 
respect to the Power that made him. "Your body," says Rutherford, "is the 
dwelling-place of the spirit, and therefore for the love you carry to the sweet 
Guest give a due regard to His house of clay, for the house is not your own." 
We read in the "Records of a Quiet Life" that it is one of the hardest things 
in the world to be true to one's self in one's intercourse with others. "There 
is scarcely anything that requires more real courage. How little is there of 
true freedom from all put-on conversation and manner! The more truly 
Christian is our spirit, the more truly shall we rise out of this bondage, 
which is of the earth earthly, to preserve our truth and uprightness of charac- 
ter, to be in all places and at all times and with all people one and the same, 
not equally open or equally communicative, but equally free from what is 
artificial and constrained, and steadfast in keeping fast hold of those princi- 
ples and feelings w T hich are known to be according to God's will and law. " 
The great poem of the "Happy Warrior" does not apply to the soldier 
merely, but to every earnest, striving soul on earth. 

"Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be? 
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought 
Among the tasks cf real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought; 
Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always bright: 
Who, with a natural instinct to discern 
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn, 
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
But makes his moral being his prime care. 



^ 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 7l 

But who, if he be called upon to face 

Some awful moment to which heaven has joine_ 

Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 

Is happy as a Lover, and attired 

With sudden brightness like a man inspired; 

And through the heat of conflict keeps the law 

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw; 

Or if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need." 

I have thought that the story of Miss Moggaridge's Provider was an illus- 
tration of that sweet self-reverence which implies absolute belief and truth in 
Providence, and of the truth of the saying of Thomas A Kempis that, "From 
a pure heart proceedeth the fruit of a good life." 



Miss Moggaridge's Provider. 

The way in which people interested themselves in Miss Moggaridge's 
affairs would have been a curiosity in itself anywhere but in the seacoast 
town where Miss Moggaridge lived. But there it had become so much a mat- 
ter of course for one neighbor to discuss the various bearings of all the inci- 
dents in another neighbor's life, and — if unexplained facts still remained to 
supply the gap from fancy — in addition to the customary duty of keeping 
the other neighbor's conscience, that it never struck a soul among all the wor- 
thy tribes there that they were doing anything at all out of the way in gossip- 
ing, wondering, conjecturing, and declaring this, that, and the other about 
Miss Moggaridge's business after a fashion that would have made any one but 
herself perfectly wild. 

But Miss Moggaridge was a placid soul, and as the fact of her neighbor's 
gossip implied a censure which perhaps she felt to be not altogether unde- 
served, while, on the other hand, their wonder was not entirely uncomplimen- 
tary, she found herself able to disregard them altogether, and in answer to 
query, complaint, or expostulation concerning her wicked waste, which was to 
make woful want, always met her interlocutor with the sweet and gentle 
words, "The Lord will provide." 

. Poor Miss Moggaridge's father had been that extraordinary phenomenon, 
a clergyman possessed not only of treasure in Heaven, but of the rustier and 
more corruptible treasure of this world's goods — an inherited treasure, by 
the way, which he did not have time to scatter to the four winds in person, as 
it was left to him by an admirer (to whom his great sermon on the Seventh 



STEPPING STONEvS TO HAPPINESS. 



Seal had brought spiritual peace), but a few years before his death, which 
happened suddenly; and the property was consequently divided according to 
his last will and testament between two of his three children, giving them each 
a modest competency, but leaving the third to shift for himself, as he always 
had done. The first thing which Miss Moggaridge did with her freedom and 
her money was to imitate the example of the "fearless son of Ginger Blue," 
and try a little travel, to the great scandal of souls in her native borough, who 
found no reason why Miss Moggaridge should want to see any more of the 
world than that borough presented to her, and never shared her weak and 
wicked desire to see what sort of region it was that lay on the other side of the 
bay and the breakers. 

"The idea, Ann!" said Miss Keturah Meteyard, a well-to-do spinster 
whose farm and stock, and consequently whose opinion, were the pride of the 
place — "the idea of your beginning at your time of life to kite round like a 
young girl. The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth," quoted Miss 
Keturah, with a long sigh. "For my part, the village is good enough for 
me!" 

"And for me too, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "I am not going any 
great distance; I — I am going to see Jack." 

Now Jack was the scapegrace Moggaridge, who had run away to sea and 
therewith to the bad ; and the stern clergyman, his father, having satisfied 
his mind on the point that there was no earthly reclamation possible for Jack, 
had with true, old-style rigor commenced and carried on the difficult work of 
tearing the boy out of his heart, that since Heaven had elected Jack to damna- 
tion there might be no carnal opposition on his own part through the weak 
bonds of the flesh; and Jack's name had not been spoken in that house from 
which he fled for many a year before the old man was gathered to his fathers. 
For all that, every now and then a letter came to Miss Ann and another went 
from her in reply, and her father, with an inconsistency very mortifying but 
highly human, saw them come and saw them go, convinced that he should 
hear from Ann whatever news need might be for him to hear; and so it came 
to pass that Miss Ann knew of Jack's whereabouts, and that Miss Keturah, 
hearing her intent of seeking them — Miss Keturah with one eye on the com- 
munity and one on her old pastor — held up her hands a brief instant in holy 
horror before memory twitched them down again. 

'Ann!" said she, solemnly — "Ann, do you know what you are 
doing?" 

"Doing?" said Miss Moggaridge. "In going to see Jack, do you mean? 
Certainly I do. A Christian duty." 

"And what," said Miss Keturah — "what constitutes you a better judge 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 73 

of Christian duty than your sainted father, a Christian minister for fifty years 
breaking the bread of life in this parish?" 

"Very well,*' said Miss Moggaridge, unable to answer such an argument 
as that — for Miss Keturah fought like those armies that put their prisoners in 
the front, so that a shot from Miss Moggaridge must necessarily have demol- 
ished her father the clergyman — "very well," said his faithful daughter, 
"perhaps not a Christian duty, we will say not; but, at any rate, a natural 
duty." 

"And you dare to set a natural duty, a duty of our unregenerate condi- 
tion, above the duties of such as are set apart from the world?" 

"My dear Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, "I am not sure that we ever 
are or ever should be set apart from the world ; that we are not placed here to 
work in it and with it till our faith and our example leaven it." 

"Ann Moggaridge'" said the other, springing to her feet, with a lively 
scarlet in her yellow face, a color less Christian perhaps than that of her re- 
marks, "this is rank heresy, and I won't stay to hear it!" 

"O pooh, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, listening to the denunciation of 
her opinions with great good-humor, "we ve gone all through that a hundred 
times. Sit down again — we'll leave argument to the elders — I want to talk 
about something else." 

"Something else v ' with a change as easy as Harlequin's. 

"Yes, I want to talk to you about that corner meadow. It just takes a 
jog out of your land, and I've an idea you'd like to buy it. Now say so, 
freely, if you would." 

'"'Humph! what has put that into your head, I'd like to know? You've 
refused a good price for it, you and your father, every spring for ten years, to 
my knowledge. You want," said Miss Keturah, facing about with uplifted 
forefinger like an accusing angel — in curl-papers and brown gingham — "you 
want the ready money to go and see Jack with! 

"Well, yes. I don't need the meadow and I do need the money; for 
when you have everything tied up in stocks, you can't always get at it, you 
know." 

"That's very shiftless of you, Ann Moggaridge," said Miss Keturah. 
"When the money's gone, it's gone, but there the meadow'll always be." 

'Bless your heart, for the matter of that, I've made up my mind to get 
rid of all the farm." 

"Get rid of the farm'' 

"Yes. I'm not well enough nor strong enough to carry it on by myself, 
now father's gone, and his means are divided. Y 7 our place would make me 
blush like a fever beside it. No, I couldn't keep it to advantage; so I think 



74 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

I shall let you take the corner meadow, if you want it, and Squire Purcell will 
take the rest." 

"And what will you do with yourself when, you come back from — from 
Jack, if you really mean to go?" 

"O, board with the Squire or anywhere; the Lord will provide a place; 
perhaps with you," added Miss Moggaridge, archly. 

"No, indeed," said Miss Keturah, "not with me! We never should have 
any peace of our lives. There isn't a point in all the Westminster Catechism 
that we don't differ about, and we should quarrel as to means of grace at 
every meal we sat down to. Besides which, you would fret me to death with 
your obstinacy when you are notoriously wrong — as in this visit to Jack, for 
instance." 

"Jack needs me, Kitty. I must go to him." 

"It is your spiritual pride that must go and play the good Samaritan!" 

"Jack and I used to be the dearest things in the world to each other when 
we were children, you know," said Miss Ann, gently. "We had both our 
pleasures and our punishments together. The severity of our home drove 
him off — I don't know what it drove him to. I waited, because father claimed 
my first duty; now, I must do what can be done to help Jack into the narrow 
path again. ' 

"The severity of your home!" said Miss Keturah, who had heard nothing 
since that; "of such a home as yours, such a Christian home, with — 
with" 

"The benefit of clergy," laughed Miss Moggaridge. 

"Ann, you're impious!" exclaimed Miss Keturah, bringing down her um- 
brella hard enough to blunt its ferule. "Much such a spirit as that will do to 
bring Jack back! It isn't your place to bring him back, either. You've had 
no call to be a missionary, and it's presumption in you to interfere with the 
plain will of Providence. You will go your own gait, of course, but you sha'n't 
go without knowing that I and every friend you have disapprove of the pro- 
ceeding. And it's another step to total beggary, for the upshot of it all will 
be that Jack coaxes and wheedles your money." 

"My money?" said Miss Ann. "There will be no need of any coaxing 
and wheedling; it's as much his as mine." 

"His!" 

"I know father expected me to do justice, and so he didn't trouble him- 
self. I should feel I was wronging him in his grave if I refused." 

"And what is Luke going to do, may I ask?" inquired Miss Keturah, 
with grim stolidit} 

"Because Luke won't give up any of his, is no reason why I shouldn't." 



--^. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 75 

"Luke won't? That's like him. Sensible. Sensible' He won't give 
the Lord's substance to the ungodly." 

"So he says. But I m atraid not to the godly, either. I'm afraid he 
wouldn't even to me if 1 stood in want, though perhaps 1 oughtrf t to say so." 
'Not it you'd wasted all you have on Jack, certainly." 

"I shall divide my property with Jack as a measure of simple justice, 
Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, firmly " It is as much his as mine, as 1 said." 

"And when it s all gone," continued Miss Keturah, "what is to become 
of you then?" 

"When it's all gone? O, there's no danger of that. " 

'There's danger of anything between your butter-fingers, Ann, So if it 
should happen, what then?" 

"The Lord will provide," said Miss Ann, sweetly. 

"The Lord helps them that help themselves," said Miss Keturah. "Well, 
I'm gone, I'd wrestle longer with you if it was any use — you're as set as 
Lot's wile. I suppose," she said, turning round after she had reached the 
door, "you II come and see me before you go. I've — I've something you 
might take Jack; you know I ve been knitting socks all the year and we've no 
men-folks," and then she was gone. 

Poor Miss Keturah — a good soul after her own fashion, which was not 
Miss Moggaridge s fashion — once she had expected the wicked Jack to come 
home trom sea and marry her ; and the expectation and the disappointment 
together had knit a bond between her and his sister that endured a great deal 
ot stretching and striving. The neighbors said that she had pious spells; but 
if that were so, certainly these spells were sometimes so protracted as almost 
to become chronic, and in fact frequently to assume the complexion ot a com- 
plaint; but they never hindered her from driving a bargain home to the head, 
from putting royal exactions on the produce of her dairy, from sending her 
small eggs to market, and from disputing every bill, from the tax-man's to the 
tithes, that ever was presented at her door. But somewhere down under that 
crust of hers there was a drop of honey to reward the adventurous seeker, and 
MisJr Ann always declared that she knew where to find it. 

So Miss Moggaridge went away trom the seacoast tor some seasons, and 
the tides ebbed and flowed, and the moons waxed and waned, and the years 
slipped off after each other, and the villagers found other matter for their 
gossip; and the most of them had rather forgotten her, when some half dozen 
years later she returned, quite old and worn and sad. having buried trie 
wretched Jack, and a goodly portion of her modest fortune with him. and 
bringing back nothing but his dog as a souvenir of his existence — a poor little 
shivering hound that in no wise met the public approbation. 



76 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




A LETTER CAME TO MISS ANN. 



But Miss Moggaridge did not long allow her old acquaintances to remain 
unaware of her return among them. The very day after her arrival a disas- 
trous fire in the village had left a family destitute and shelterless; and. head- 
ing a subscription list with a moderate sum, she went round with it in person, 
as she had been wont to do in the old times, till the sight ot her approaching 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 77 

shadow had caused the stingy man to flee. And now, with every rebuff she 
met, every complaint of hard times, bad bargains, poor crops, she altered the 
figures against her own name for those of a larger amount, till by night-fall 
the forlorn family had the means of being comfortable again, through the 
goodness of the village and Miss Moggaridge; for had not the village given 
the cipher, whatever might be the other figures which Miss Moggaridge had 
of herself prefixed thereto ? True to her instincts, Miss Keturah Meteyard 
waylaid her old friend next day. "I've heard all about it, Ann, so you needn't 
pretend ignorance," she began. "And you may think it very fine, but I call 
it totally unprincipled. Are you Croesus, or Rothschild, or the Queen of Sheba 
come again, to be running to the relief of all the lazy and shiftless folks in 
the country? Everybody is talking about it ; everybody's wondering at you, 
Ann!" 

"Everybody may reimburse me, Kitty, just as soon as they please." 

'Perhaps they will, when they're angels. The idea of your" 

'But, Kitty, I couldn't see those poor Morrises without a roof over them; 
and if you want the truth," said Miss Moggaridge, turning like the trodden 
worm, "I can't imagine how you could. Why, where on earth could they go?" 

"There was no need of seeing them without a roof. The neighbors'd have 
taken them in till they rebuilt the place. Perhaps that would have spurred 
Morris up enough to make an exertion, which he never did in his life. If he'd 
been one atom forehanded, he'd have had something laid by in bank to fall 
back on at such a time. I declare, I've no patience!" cried Miss Keturah, with 
nobody to dispute her. And any one would be glad of those two girls as 
help," she continued. "Great lazy, hulking, fine ladies they are! And the 
first thing they'll do with your money will be to buy an ingrain carpet and a 
looking-glass and a couple of silk gowns, whether there's enough left for a 
broom and a dish-cloth or not. Go?" cried Miss Keturah, now quite at tne 
climax of her virtuous indignation. "They could go to the poorhouse, where 
you'll go if some of your friends don't take you in hand and have a guardian 
appointed over you!" 

But Miss Moggaridge only laughed ana kissed her censor good by, and 
made up her mind to save the sum of her prodigality out of her own expenses 
in some way ; by giving up her nice boarding-place, perhaps, and boarding 
herself in two or three rooms of a house she still owned, where she could go 
without groceries and goodies, for instance, in such things as fruit and sugar 
and butter and eggs and all the dainties to be concocted therewith; for bread 
and meat and milk would keep body and soul together healthily, she reasoned, 
and acted on her reasoning. But instead of making good, by this economy, 
the sum she hacf extracted from her hoard, she presently found that the sav- 



7 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

ing thus accomplished had been used upon the outfit of a poor young minister 
going to preach to the Queen of Madagascar. Miss Keturah was not so loud 
in her disapproval of this as of some of Miss Moggaridge's other less eccen- 
tric charities; but as giving away in any shape was not agreeable to her, she 
could not help remarking that, if she were Miss Moggaridge, she should feel 
as if she had lent a hand to help cast him into a fiery furnace, for that would 
undoubtedly be the final disposition of the unfortunate young minister by the 
wicked savages of the island whither he was bound.- She herself only bestowed 
upon him some of her knitted socks to walk the furnace in. What she did 
cavil at much more was the discovery that Miss Moggaridge was living alone. 
"Without help, Ann Moggaridge! "she said, laying her hands along her knees 
in an attitude of fine Egyptian despair. "And pinching yourself to the last 
extremity, I'll be bound, for these Morrises and young ministers and what 
not' What would your father say to see it? And if you should be sick in 
the middle of the night and no one near to hear you call" 

"The Lord '11 provide for me, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, for the 
thousandth time. 

"He won't provide a full-grown servant-girl, springing up out of noth- 
ing." 

"But there's no need of worry, dear, with such health as mine." 

"Ic's tempting Providence!" 

"Tempting Providence to what?' 

"Ann!" said Miss Keturah, severely, "I don't understand how any one as 
good as you — for you are good in spite of your faults" 

"There is none good but One," Miss Moggaridge gently admonished her. 

"As good as you," continued Miss Keturah, obliviously, "and enjoying 
all your lifelong privileges, can indulge in levity and so often go so near the 
edge of blasphemy, without a shudder." 

"Dear Kitty,'* said Miss Ann, laughing, "we shall never agree, though 
we love each other so much; so where is the use? For my part, I think it 
blasphemy to suppose Providence could be tempted." 

"Ann! Ann!" said Miss Keturah, solemnly. "Don't indulge such 
thoughts. They will lead you presently into doubting the existence of a per- 
sonal Devil! And now," continued she, reverting to the original topic, "I 
sha'n't go away till you promise me to take in help, so that you needn't die 
alone in the night, and be found stiff in the morning by a stranger '" And 
poor Miss Moggaridge had to promise, at last, though it upset all her little 
scheme of saving in groceries and firewood and wages, and went to her heart 
sorely. 

It was not very long after this expostulation of Miss Keturah's that — a 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 79 

stout-armed serving- woman having been added to Miss Moggaridge's family — 
another more singular addition made itself on the night when a ship was 
nipped among the breakers behind which the town had intrenched itself, and 
went to pieces just outside the cove of stiller water, at whose head stood the 
house in which were Miss Moggaridge's rooms. Of all the freighting lives 
on board that doomed craft, one thing alone ever came to shore — a bird, that, 
as Miss Moggaridge peered from the door which Bridget held open for her, 
fluttered through the tumultuous twilight air and into her arms. Miss Mog- 
garidge left Bridget to set her back to the door and push it inch by inch, till 
one triumphant slam proclaimed victory over the elements, while hastening 
in herself to bare her foundling before the fire. It was a parrot, drenched 
with the wave and the weather in spite of his preening oils, shivering in her 
hands, and almost ready to yield to firelight and warmth the remnant of life 
that survived his battling flight. Miss Moggaridge bestowed him in a basket 
of wool in a corner of the heated hearth, placed milk and crumbs at hand, and 
no more resumed her knitting and soft-voiced psalm-singing, but fidgeted 
about the darkened windows and wondered concerning the poor souls who, 
since they never could make shore again themselves, had given the bird the 
liberty of his wings. She was attracted again to the fireside by a long whistle 
of unspeakable relief, and, turning, saw the bird stepping from the basket, 
treading daintily down the tiles, and waddling to and fro before the blessed 
blaze, while he chuckled to himself unintelligibly, but quite as if he nad prac- 
ticed the cunningest trick over storm and shipwreck that could have been de- 
vised. Bridget would have frowned the intruder down, and did eventually 
give warning "along of the divii's imp," as she called him ; but Miss Mogga- 
ridge was as pleased as a child; it was the only thing of the sort in the village, 
and what a means to attract the little people, whom she loved, and at the same 
time to administer to them diluted doses of the moral law! Had she chosen, 
to be sure, it would have been one of the great gray African things she had 
read of, that spread a scarlet tail and seemed the phoenix of some white- 
washed brand in which the smouldering fire yet sparkles. But this was a lit- 
tle fellow with scarlet on his shoulders and his wings, a golden cap on his 
head, and it would have been hard to say whether the glistening mantle over 
his back were emerald crusted with gold or gold enameled with emerald, sc 
much did every single feather shine like a blade of green grass full of flint. 
While she looked, and admired, and wished, nevertheless, that it were gray, 
another door was pushed gently open and Folly entered — Jack's slim white 
hound, as much a miracle of beauty m his own way — made at the bird with 
native instinct, then paused with equally native cowardice, and looked at Miss 
Moggaridge and wagged his tail, as who should say, "Praise my forbearance. ^ 



So 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 



But the par- 
rot, having 
surveyed 
Master Fol- 
ly on this 
side and on 
that from a 
pair of eyes 
like limpid 
jewels, op- 
en ed his 
mouth and 
barked. No- 
thing" else 
was needed; 
the phan- 
tom of the 
gray parrot 
disappeared 
whence he 
came ; more 
intelligence 
no child could have 
shown. Miss Mogga- 
. ridge caught him up, re- 
ceived a vicious bite for her 
pains, but, notwithstanding, 
suffered him to cling upon her 
fingers, tightly grasping which, 
he looked down upon the hound, 
flapped his gorgeous wings and 
crowed ; then he went through an 
astonishing series of barn-yard ac- 
complishments, finally ending in a 
burst and clatter of the most up- 
roarious and side-splitting laughter. 
Having done this, he had exhaust- 
ed his repertory, and never for all the time during which he delighted 
the heart of Miss Moggaridge and forced Miss Keturah to regard him as a 
piece of supernatural sin created by the Evil One in mockery of the crea- 




THE SHIP WENT TO PIECES. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 81 

tion of man, so that had she but been a good Catholic she would have crossed 
herself before him, and, without being an ancient Persian, did frequently pro- 
pitiate him after the fashion of the Ahrimanian worship — never during all 
that time did he catch a new sound or utter an articulate syllable to denote 
from what nationality — Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch — he had received his 
earliest lessons. But he had done enough. Folly, never particularly brilliant 
in his wits, and not more strongly developed in his affections, was given 
hearth-room on sufferance for his lissome limbs, and on general grounds of 
compassion for himself and Jack together; but the parrot, luring one on with 
perpetual hopes of new attainment, and born of the tropical sun that made a 
perpetual mirage in her imagination, became cherished society, and had not 
only a shining perch, but a nest in Miss Moggaridge's affections as well — a 
nest that cost her dearly some years afterward. 

But before the town had much more than done wondering at Miss Mog- 
garidge's parrot, and telling all the gossipry of his deeds and misdeeds — of 
the way he picked the lock of his cage, walked up the walls, tearing off the pa- 
pering as he went, bit big splinters from the window-blinds, drove away every 
shadow of a cat, and made general havoc — Miss Moggaridge gave such occa- 
sion for a fresh onslaught of tongues, that the bird was half forgotten. 

It was when her name was found to have been indorsed upon her brother 
Luke's paper — Luke being the resident of another place — and in his failure 
the larger portion of her earthly goods was swept out of her hands. One 
would have supposed that Miss Moggaridge had been guilty of a forgery, and 
that not her own property, but the church funds, had been made away with 
by means of the wretched signature ; and a particular aggravation of the ca- 
lamity, in the eyes of her towns-people, seemed to be its clandestine charac- 
ter ; if they had been consulted or had even been made aware that such a 
thing might possibly be expected, much might have been condoned. As it 
was, they were glad, they were sure, that she felt able to afford such fine 
doings, but they had heard of such a thing as being just before you were gen- 
erous, and they only hoped she wouldn't come upon the town in her old age 
in consequence, that was all; for much that close-fisted Luke would do for 
her, even if he got upon his feet again — Luke who had been heard to remark 
tbat the loss of a cent spoiled the face of a dollar ! 

But Luke never got upon his feet again, and during the rest of his lire he 
struggled along from hand to mouth, with one child binding shoes and an- 
other in the mills, a scanty board, a thread-bare back ; and though Miss Mog- 
garidge was left now with nothing but a mere pittance of bank stock over 
and above the possession of the house in which she reserved her rooms, yet 
out of the income thus remaining she still found it possible now and then to 



82 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

send a gold -piece to Luke — a gold-piece which in his eyes looked large enough 
to eclipse the sun, while she patched and turned and furbished many a worn 
old garment of her own, in order that she might send a new one to her sister- 
in-law, of whom Miss Keturah once declared that she put her more in mind 
of an old shoe-knife worn down to the handle than of anything else in the 
world. 

"As if it would make the least difference in her appearance, " said Miss 
Keturah, who had a faculty of mousing out all these innocent crimes against 
society on Miss Moggaridge's part, "whether she wore calico or homespun? 
Dress up a split rail ! And you rigging yourself out of therag -bag so as to 
send her an alpaca. Why can't she work? /work." 

"Bless you, Kitty, doesn't she work like a slave now for the mere privi- 
lege of drawing her breath? What more can she do?" 

"That's no business of mine, or yours either. Your duty, " said Miss 
Keturah, "your bounden duty's to take care of yourself. And here you are 
wearing flannels thin as vanity, because you've no money left to buy thick 
ones; and you'll get a cold and a cough through these Luke Moggaridges 
that'll carry you out of the world; and then," exclaimed she, with an unus- 
ual quaver in her piercing tone — "then I should like to know what is to be- 
come of" 

"The Lord will provide for me, Kitty." 

"So I've heard you say!" she snapped. "But I was talking about myself 

— He won't provide me with another Ann Moggaridge" And there Miss 

Keturah whisked herself out of sight, possibly to prevent any such catas- 
trophe as her friend's seeing a tear in those sharp eyes of hers unused to such 
weak visitants. 

Yet as a law of ethics is the impossibility of standing still in face of the 
necessity of motion, either progressive or retrograde, so Miss Moggaridge 
went on verifying the worst prognostications of her neighbors ; and it was 
surmised that the way in which she had raised the money to pay for having 
the cataract removed from old Master Sullivan's eyes — eyes worn out in the 
service of two generations of the town's children — which she was one day 
found to have done, was by scrimping her store of wood and coal (Bridget's 
departure having long left her free to do so), to that mere apology for a fire 
the winter long to which she owed a rheumatism that now began to afflict 
her hands and feet in such a manner as to make her nearly useless in any 
physical effort. It was no wonder the townsfolk were incensed against her, 
for her conduct implied a reproof of theirs that was vexatious ; why in the 
world couldn't she have let Master Sullivan's eyes alone? He had looked out 
upon the world and had seen it to his satisfaction or dissatisfaction for three- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 83 

> 
score years and over ; one would have imagined he had seen enough of a 
place whose sins he was always bewailing! 

But a worse enormity than almost any preceding ones remained yet to 
be perpetrated by Miss Moggaridge. It was an encroachment upon her cap- 
ital, her small remaining capital, for the education of one of the Luke Mog- 
garidges, a bright boy whom his aunt thought to be possessed of too much 
ability to rust away in a hand-to-hand struggle with life. Longing, perhaps, 
to hear him preach some searching sermon in his grandfather's pulpit, and to 
surrender into safe and appreciative keeping those barrels full of sacred man- 
uscripts which she still treasured, she had resolved to have him fitted and sent 
to college. Very likely the town in which the boy lived thought it a worthy 
action of the aunt's, but the town in which he didn't live regarded it as a 
piece of Quixotism on a par with all her previous proceedings, since the boy 
would have been as well off at a trade, Miss Moggaridge much better off, and 
the town plus certain tax money now lost to it forever. It was, however, re- 
served for Miss Keturah to learn the whole extent of her offence before the 
town had done so — to learn that she had not been spending merely all her in- 
come, dismissing Bridget, freezing herself, starving herself , but she had been 
drawing on her little principal till there was barely enough to buy her a 
yearly gown and shoes, and in order to live at all she must spend the whole 
remainder now, instead of waiting for any interest. 

''Exactly, exactly, exactly what I prophesied!" cried Miss Keturah. 
"And who but you could contrive, let alone could have done, such a piece of 
work ? You show ingenuity enough in bringing yourself to beggary to have 
made your fortune at a patent. You have a talent for ruin!" 

"I am not afraid of beggary, Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge. "How 
often shall I quote the Psalmist to you? 'I have been young and now am old; 
yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.' " 

"I know that, Ann. I say it over often. It's the only thing that leaves 
me any hope for you." And Miss Keturah kept a silent meditation for a few 
moments. "As if it wasn't just as well," she broke forth at length, "for that 
Luke Moggaridge boy to dig potatoes or make shoes, as to preach bad ser- 
mons, or kill off patients, or make confusion worse confounded in a lawsuit!" 

Whether Miss Moggaridge thought it a dreadful world where every one 
spoke the truth to his neighbor, or not, she answered, pleasantly, "Kitty, dear, 
I should have consulted you as to that" 

"As to what? Shoes or sermons? He might have made good shoes." 

"Only," continued Miss Moggaridge, meekly but determinedly — "only 
you make such a breeze if you think differently, that I felt it best to get him 
through college first" 



8 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"Why couldn't he get himself through?" 

"Well, he's sickly." 

"O dear Lord, as if there weren't enough of that kind! Serve Heaven 
because he can" t serve the flesh! Taking dyspepsia and blue devils for faith 
and works!" 

" You mustn't now, Kitty, you mustn't. I meant for us all to advise to- 
gether concerning the choice ot a profession after his graduation. For he has 
real talent, he'll do us credit.' 1 

"Well, 11 said Miss Keturah, a little mollified, "it might have been wise. 
It might have saved you a pretty penny, /might have lent the young man 
the money he needed, and it would have done him no harm to feel that he 
was to refund it when he was able, 1 ' 

"That is exactly what I have done, Kitty. And I never thought of let- 
ting any one else, even you — though I'd rather it should be you than any one 
— while I was able. And I'm sure I can pinch along any way till he can pay 
me; and if he never can pay me, he can take care of me, for he is a noble 
boy, a noble boy " 

"And what if he shouldn't live to do anyaiing of the sort?" 

"O, I can't think of such a thing." 

"He mightn't, though. There's many a hole in the skimmer. " 
"I don t know — 1 don't know what 1 should do. But there, no matter. I 
shall be taken care of some way, come what will. I always have been. The 
Lord will provide/' 

"Well now, Ann, I'm going to demand one thing by my right as your 
next friend, and one caring a great deal more about you than all the Lukes 
in the world, You won t lend that boy, noble or otherwise, another penny, 
but you'll let him keep school and work his way through his profession him- 
self. ' ' 

"No indeed, Kitty! That would make it six or seven years before he got 
his profession. There are only a few hundreds left, so they may as well go 
with the others.' 1 

"Light come, light go, M sniffed Miss Keturah. "If you'd had to work 
for that money What. I repeat, what in the mean time is to become of you ?" 

"Don't fear for me; the Lord will provide." 

"The poorhouse will, you mean! Why in the name of wonder can't he 
work his way up, as well as his betters?" 

'Well, the truth is, Kitty, he's — he's engaged. And of course he wants 
to be married And" 

But Miss Keturah had risen from her chair and stalked out, and slammed 
the door behind her, without another syllable. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 85 

Poor Miss Moggaridge. It was but little more than a twelvemonth after 
this conversation that her noble boy was drowned while bathing; and half 
broken-hearted — for she had grown very fond of him through his constant let- 
ters and occasional visits — she never called to mind how her money, princi- 
pal and interest and education, had gone down with him and left her abso- 
lutely penniless, save for the rent of the residue of the house where she kept 
her two or three rooms. But Miss Keturah did. 

Miss Moggaridge was now, moreover, quite unable to do a thing to help 
herself. Far too lame in her feet to walk and in her hands to knit, she was 
obliged to sit all day in her chair doing nothing, and have her meals brought 
to her by the family, and her rooms kept in order, in payment of the rent, 
while her time was enlivened only by the children who dropped in to see the 
parrot — an entertainment ever new; by a weekly afternoon of Mrs. Morris', 
who came and did up all the little odd jobs of mending on which she could 
lay her willing hands; by the calls of Master Sullivan, glowering at the world 
out of a pair of immense spectacles, through which he read daily chapters of 
the Psalms to her; and by the half -loving, half -quarreling visits of Miss Ke- 
turah. She used to congratulate herself in those days over the possession of 
the parrot. "I should forget my tongue if I hadn't him and the hound to talk 
with/' she used to say, in answer to Miss Keturah's complaints of the screech- 
ing with which the bird always greeted her. "He is a capital companion. 
When I see him so gay and good-natured, imprisoned in his cage with none 
of his kind near, I wonder at myself for repining over my confinement in so 
large and airy a room as this, where I can look out on the sea all day long." 
And she bent her head down for the bird to caress, and loved him none the 
less on the next day — when Miss Keturah would have been glad to wring his 
neck — for the crowning disaster of her life, which he brought about that very 
evening. ^ 

For the mischievous fellow, working open the door of his cage, as he had 
done a thousand times before, while Miss Moggaridge sat nodding in her 
chair, had clambered with bill and claw here and there about the room, calling 
in the aid of his splendid wings when need was, till, reaching a match-safe 
and securing a card of matches in his bill with which he made off, pausing 
only on the top of a pile of religious newspapers, on a table beneath the chintz 
window-curtains, to pull them into a multitude of splinters; and the conse- 
quence was that presently his frightened screams woke the helpless Miss Mog- 
garidge to a dim, half-suffocated sense that the world was full of smoke, and 
to find the place in flames, and the neighbors rushing in and carrying her, 
and the parrot clinging to her, to a place of safety, upon which Miss Keturah 
swooped down directly and had her removed to her own house and installed in 



86 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the bedroom adjoining the best-room, without asking her so much as whether 
she would or no. 

''Well, Ann," said Miss Keturah, rising from her knees after their even- 
ing prayers, "it's the most wonderful deliverance I ever heard anything 
about." 

'It is indeed," sobbed the poor lady, still quivering with her excitement. 
"And, under Heaven, I may thank Poll for it," she said, looking kindly at 
the crestfallen bird on the chair's arm, whose screams had alarmed the neigh- 
bors. 

"Indeed you may!" the old Adam coming uppermost again — strange they 
never called it the old Eve — "indeed you may — thank him for any mischief — 
picking out a baby's eyes or setting a house afire, it's all one to him. But 
there's no great loss without some small gain; and there's one thing in it I'm 
truly grateful for, you can't waste any more money, Ann Moggaridge, for you 
haven't got any more to waste!" 

"Why, Kitty, there's the land the house stood on, that will bring some- 
thing" — profoundly of the conviction that her possession was the widow's 
cruse, and with no idea of ever taking offence at anything that Miss Keturah 
said. 

"Yes, something. But you'll never have it," said Miss Keturah, grimly. 
"For I'm going to buy that land myself, and never pay you a cent for it; so 
you can't give that away! And now you're here, I'm going to keep you, Ann; 
for you're no more fit to be trusted with yourself than a baby. And I shall 
see that you have respectable gowns and thick flannels and warm stockings 
and the doctor. You'll have this room, and I the one on the other side that 
I've always had; and we'll have your chair wheeled out in the daytimes; and 
I think we shall get along very well together for the rest of our lives, if you're 
not as obstinate and unreasonable" 

"O Kitty," said Miss Moggaridge, looking up with streaming eyes that 
showed how great, although unspoken, her anxiety had become, and how great 
the relief from that dread of public alms which we all share alike — "O Kitty! 
I had just as lief have everything from you as not. I had rather 
owe" 

"There's no owing in the case!" said Miss Keturah, tossing her head, 
to the infinite danger of the kerosene from the whirlwind made by her 
ribbons. 

"O, there is! there is!" sobbed Miss Moggaridge. "Debts, too, I never 
can pay! You've always stood my next best friend to Heaven, dear; and 
didn't I say," she cried, with a smile breaking like sunshine through her tears 
— "didn't I say the Lord would provide?" 




BONDS OF BLOOD RELATIONSHIP. 



(•8 7 ) 



88 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER FOURTH, 



A Family Tree. 

And hie him home at evening's close 
To sweet repast and calm repose. 

— Gray. 

He that hath a house to put's head in has a good head-piece. 

— Shakespeare. 

She is my home, 
My household stuff, my field, my barn. 

— Shakespeare. 

From our own selves our joys must flow 
And that dear hut our home. 

— Nathaniel Cotton. 

Who hath a family 
Stands not alone, 
Buttressed by clansmen, 
Holpen by bannermen, 
Battle all merrily 
Many as one. 

— Old Song. 

Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, 
His first best country ever is at home. 

— Goldsmith. 

When one has made up one's mind to live in the present and to find a 
great joy in expectancy, that is to foster a sunny disposition and cease re- 
gretting the past, and when one is entrenched in a firm self-respect, one turns 
first for happiness to the family relation. God setteth the solitary in families 
is a text that we all receive with grateful hearts, and the more so the older we 
grow. The homely saying that blood is thicker than water is one of the 
truths that it is usually held there is no gainsaying, and it is believed that it 
contains, as many another law does, the concentrated wisdom of years. Yet 
we have always doubted if, after all, it were natural feeling that predominated 
among us so much as family feeling, if one can discriminate between the two ; 
for natural feeling is shared with brutes and savages, but the other belongs 



_ 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THE SAME MOTHER S KNEE. 



truly to those that are bound in the bonds of blood-relationship. The brute 
shows none or it, except in relation to the mate, and not always then, and for 
a very brief season to the offspring. 

The love of brothers and sisters, of grandparents and cousins, does not 
distinguish savages, many of whom are known to leave their old and sick to 
lonely and speedy death. But the moment that civilization advances at all, 
families and clans become established, the blood that flows in kindred veins 



9 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

begins to be recognized and felt. Some of this sentiment might possibly be 
traced to the sense of possession, for although we do not reason it out in cor- 
responding words, we are aware of it — perhaps through those dark senses that 
are to the others what the dark rays of the spectrum are to the seven colors — 
these people are ours, are in some degree a part of ourselves, certainly of our 
lives; their conduct is an honor or a dishonor to us; we are forced to think 
of them, and it flatters our self-love to think well of them ; what they are it is 
possible that we, of the same descent, may be also, and this little thread of 
pride feels a pull at the third generation 



Household Associations 

But cannot much more of the sentiment be traced to association ? There 
must be ties, equal to those of blood, in life from the earliest remembrance 
about the same hearth and at the same mother's knee — that mother who re- 
mains sacred, we will not say either because of instinct or because of the re- 
sult of long teaching, but because she bore us. And while we are a portion 
of the flesh and blood of our parents, and love is thus compelled, they would 
be strange beings if we might not also love them for themselves. But 
whether or not, we see that there is no time, in all that season when emo- 
tions are fresh and character is forming, in which the others of the family are 
not integral and inherent portions, and again through our very love of self 
they are dear to us. 

But whether this family feeling is, in its essentials, a God-given instinct 
or a matter of growth and education, it is at the foundation of all our civil 
polity, and the family is at the base of the town, as the town is at the base 
of the State , and so long as the family relation is kept pure and undefiled 
among any people, so long as children honor their parents, as parents bear 
in mind their responsibility concerning those whom they have brought into 
the world, as the hearts of brothers and sisters beat as one, so long will that 
people possess shields and safeguards against enemies in having homes and 
altar-fires worth fighting tor. 

There are few things more beautitul to see than this family affection, the 
solicitude of the old for the young, the reverence of the young for the old, 
the gentle ties of affiliation between sister and sister, the noble loyalty of 
brother fcr brother, the attention to trifles that makes happiness for one an- 
other, the deadening of strife and destruction of envy, the mutual aiding and 
uplifting. 




REVERENCE OF THE YOUNG FOR THE OLD. 



9 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Plutarch's Advice. 

Something of this was known to Plutarch, who advises his readers to imi- 
tate one who, "when he knows himself far superior to his brother, calls for 
his help and advice, whether it be the business of a rhetorician, a magistrate, 
or a friend ; in a word, he that neglects or leaves him out in no honorable em- 
ployment or concern, but joins him with himself in all his noble and worthy 
actions, employs him when present, waits for him when absent, and makes 
the world take notice that he is as fit for business as himself, but of a more 
modest and yielding disposition, and all this while he has done himself no 
wrong, and has bravely advanced his brother. " This same old heathen au- 
thor, indeed, who speaks so commendably of brotherly honor and help, has a 
great deal more to say in the same vein, which makes one see that fine family 
feeling, if not universal with the ancients, was yet by no means confined to 
our later day; and one can not but be struck at the advice he gives a young 
man in relation to a married brother, adjuring him to "have the highest es- 
teem and honor for his brother's wife, respecting and honoring her as the 
most sacred of all his brother's sacred treasures, and thus to do honor to him; 
condoling with her when she is neglected, and appeasing her when she is an- 
gered ; if she have a little offended, to intercede and sue for her peace ; if 
there have been any private difference between himself and his brother, to 

make his complaint before her in order to reconcilement When he has 

children, let him express his affection and respect to both parents with the 
greater ardency. Let him love the children equally with his own, but be 
more favorable and indulgent to them, that, if it chance that they commit 
some of their youthful faults, they may not run away and hide themselves 
among naughty acquaintances through fear of their parents' anger, but may 
have in their uncle a recourse and refuge where they will be admonished lov- 
ingly, and will find an intercessor to make their excuse and get their pardon. " 

If all this were in accordance with advice and custom among the best in 
heathen times, how much further should fraternal feeling go now, led along 
in the gentle paths of Christianity ! Yet although great things are some- 
times more easily done than small ones, we doubt if there are, in our own 
virtuous days, any better instances of brotherly love than that between two 
Eastern brothers whose dust has for thousands of years been a portion of the 
common earth, "in a question," to quote our good old Plutarch again, "not 
concerning a little patch of land, nor a few servants or cattle, but no less than 
the kingdom of Persia. When Darius was dead, some were for Ariamenes' 
succeeding to the crown, as being eldest son ; others were for Xerxes, who 
was born to Darius of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, in the time of his reign 




THE STIFF, PRIM LIKENESS OF SOME GRANDAM. 



94 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

over Persia. Ariamenes, therefore, came from Media, in no hostile posture, 
but very peaceably, to hear the matter determined. Xerxes, being there, 
used the majesty and power of a king. But when his brother was come he 
laid down his crown and other royal ornaments, went and, meeting, greeted 
him. And sending him presents, he gave a charge to his servants to deliver 
them with these words: 'With these presents your brother Xerxes expresses 
the honor he has for you ; and if by the judgment and suffrages of the Per- 
sians I be declared king, I place you next to myself. ' Ariamenes replied : 
'I accept your gifts, but presume the kingdom of Persia to be my right. 
Yet for all my younger brethren I shall have an honor, but for Xerxes in the 
first place. ' The day of determining who should reign being come, the Per- 
sians made Artabanus, brother to Darius, judge. Xerxes excepting against 
him, confiding most in the multitude, his mother, Atossa, reproved him, say- 
ing: 'Why, son, are you so shy of Artabanus, your uncle, and one of the 
best men among the Persians? And why should you dread the trial where 
the worst you can fear is to be next the throne, and to be called the King of 
Persia's brother?' Xerxes, at length submitting, after some debate Artab- 
anus adjudged the kingdom to Xerxes. ' Ariamenes presently started up and 
went and showed obeisance to his brother, and taking him by the hand, 
placed him in the throne. And from that time, being placed himself by 
Xerxes next in the kingdom, he continued the same affection to him, inso- 
much that, for his brother's honor engaging himself in the naval fight at Sal- 
amis, he was killed there." 

It is not every crowned Christian that in the years since Salamis has riv- 
aled the behavior of these brothers. It is not every one in private life that 
rivals them to-day. For, however the blood may run in our veins, neither 
natural affection nor family feeling is always quite sufficient to carry us 
through all the temptations and trials and small annoyances of daily life with- 
out constant use of the Golden Rule, without hourly remembrance of that 
Divine love which shadows forth all family love. 

It is true that the jest concerning the man who, in settling the estate left 
him by his brother, had so much trouble with it that he "almost wished he 
hadn't a' died," is still for some households more a literal interpretation of 
the prevailing spirit there than anything hyperbolic and absurd. But we 
thank Heaven that we are able to believe such households are not many; 
that, so far as domestic happiness and union go, most of our homes are as 
full of peace as the House Beautiful; that pur land is one long succession of 
such homes ; and that few of us need to learn a lesson in these high morals 
from such a people as the Persians, or from such a man as Xerxes. 

But although doing their whole duty to the living, there are many people 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



95 







TENDERNESS FOR THOSE DEAD AND GONE. 



who are unable to feel an interest in those of their race who have passed from 
earth, beyond at furthest the last two generations. Perhaps they have half a 
sensation that these people are strangers, they are so remote they would not 
care for them, so why should they do more? 



Love of Ancestors. 

Yet, if they think of it, in every link of the chain of relationship the ten- 
derest closeness of affection has probably subsisted ; they themselves were 



9 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

kissed by lips that in turn received the kisses of those behind, and they again 
received the love and caresses of those yet behind, kisses and caresses form- 
ing the long chain between people dear to one another, and not strangers, 
though the last known be many generations gone. As they look at the stiff, 
prim likeness of some grandame five or six times removed, they would not 
regard her so critically if they bethought themselves how that face had lighted 
up with smiles, and those lips had gathered sweets from the babies that grew 
up to hand down the line that ends in themselves; they would feel as if they, 
too, had come in for some share of the warmth of her nature, and recognize 
the kinship of race ; they would possibly find themselves even loving this 
woman whom they have never seen, and of whom they know nothing but 
that she lived and loved. It is not easy always to throw ourselves into the 
personality of those who belonged to a life so long past and so different from 
our own ; but we are sure to know that, whatever their lives were, their hearts 
were the hearts of mothers and fathers, and into those imagined natures, 
then, there is not a heart of their posterity which beats that cannot pulse some 
of its own warm life-blood, and make them for the nonce alive. 

There can hardly be too much closeness in family ties between the mem- 
bers of an existing generation ; there is none too much love broadcast in the 
world, and if it is not our duty to value and cherish those of our own blood, 
it would be hard to say whose duty it is. The more this obligation is recog- 
nized, the better for the world in general, and surely for the world in partic- 
ular, for there is nothing that smooths the way through life like love, and 
love that is also a duty has an added force, and is twice love 



Family Traditions. 

Few things stimulate this family love more than the treasuring in com- 
mon of family love and tradition, the looking for the repetition of family 
traits in mind and body, and a certain jealous respect for the honor of those 
who are not here to maintain their own honor, no matter should it even go 
so far as to make sure that the descendants of these ancestors shall them- 
selves be decent and honorable people. A certain tenderness for these dead 
and gone persons is a worthy feeling that, far from doing harm, is deepening 
and enlarging to the nature ; a certain determination to feel this tenderness 
puts one already into the attitude of reverence that, if it does no other good, 
inclines one to consider more warmly the good of their other descendants and 
bind more nearly the family tie. One need not, in order to do fit reverence 
to the old root of a family tree, follow the example of the Chinese, and make 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



97 




THE POSSESSION OF . 

a solemn business of wor- 
shipping one's ancestors 
with prayer and sacrifice and 
genuflection ; nor even the 
example of those among our- 
selves who, judged by their 
conversation with its boasts of past splendor, would seem to be trying to 
make other people worship their ancestors in order to throw glorification 
on themselves. For, after all, the most fit act of reverence that we can pos- 
sibly show this old family tree of ours is to prove to the world that the best 
part of it is not that which is under the sod. 

To be sure there is a certain pride in armorial bearings and titled de- 
scent, with which a republican people have and should have little or nothing 
to do, and which to those who believe ardently in our institutions seem but 
agencies of harm, even if looked at 'more as matters of curiosity and art than 
in any other way. 



The Coat of Arms. 

Yet it is pleasant to know, albeit in a country where coats of arms are out 
of order, what the coat of arms was that fell to one's ancestors in the great 



9 8 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



strifes for existence and booty in previous centuries, as historically illustra- 
tive of the character and attainment of a man whose ever-so-many-times-di- 
luted blood may run in our veins, and of the standard which he was obliged 
to live up to, as we now try to live up to our blue china. And one also nat- 
urally takes pride in the motto that indicates, if it chances so to do, a lofty 
character in the man from whom we have some part of our character as well 
as of our blood. Many a coat of arms, indeed, as well by its bearings, its 
crest, as its motto, indicates the whole character and nature of a family — a 
nature impressed so powerfully that all the other sides of the house have 
failed to make themselves felt in material modification, and if the family 
were to be characterized by heraldry to-day, it might be in the same manner. 
Thus one may actually have an interest in the arms of the family that is per- 
fectly legitimate, and not a subject of pompous parade or improper pride — an 
interest in the expression of heroism, or force, or whatever it may be that 
they commemorate, shut up in that little space as if it were crystallized 
there ; and one feels a right to hope that something of such worthy ancestry 
may at some time re-appear in one's self or in one's children. 

For other use than this, which may be called a virtual and virtuous use, 
citizens of a republic have no need of a coat of arms, which is recognized 
neither by the laws nor the customs of a republic ; and it is to be expected 
that it will be looked on with suspicion, when blazoned abroad in all its brav- 
ery, by those who are jealous of the preservation of so costly a boon as lib- 
erty, wrenched as that was from the hands of those who still display their ar- 
morial bearings in countries that do not present so fair a view of human na- 
ture in the masses as this one, in which the common people mount heights of 
thought and education and comfort hand in hand with the liberty that their 
fathers gained. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 99 



CHAPTER FIFTH. 



A Home in Town. 

He that holds fast the golden mean, 
And lives contentedly between 

The little and the great, 
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, 
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door. 

— Cowper s Translation of Horace, 

Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep, 
And all that mighty heart is lying still. 

— Wordsworth. 

As many ways meet in one town 

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea. 

— Shakespeare. 

I must live among my neighbors. 

— Shakespeare. 

I will go lose myself 

And wander up and down to see the city. 

— Shakespeare. 

Good talkers are found only in Paris. 

— Francois Villon. 

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of every town or city. 

— Dr. Holmes. 

Then rose Elaine and glided through the fields 
And past beneath the weirdly sculptured gates 
Far up the dim rich city to her kin. 

— Tennyson. 

Having our personal condition satisfactory, in the determination to 
make the most of the present, and to surround ourselves with the atmosphere 
of hope and of self-respect, we find our next stepping-stone to happiness in 
the possession of a home. There are many of us who, on account of our 
work, our business, or our family relations, or from a long habit of genera- 
tions of pur people ; must have our home in the city, and so prefer it. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 






. 




Owning the House. 

It is not always easy to own a house there ; not only because large hold- 
ers of property there are unwilling to part with it, but because the first ex- 
pense is too much for the light purse. If it is the want of funds that oblige 
one to forego the happiness of owning the house, it is not impossible to prac- 
tice a strict economy till enough money is laid by for a first payment, if the 
house is purchasable ; and then a mortgage is easily to be negotiated at any 
savings bank or with any money-lender, and the house is practically ours. 
We find then that there is something to live up to in laying by money each 
) r ear that otherwise we should have wasted in uncourted and unthinking 
ways; and it gives us presently a great pleasure to do this, and almost before 
we know it the mortgage is wiped out. But if that may not be, it is our best 
interest to obtain a long lease of the house, not only that the rent may not rise 
upon us, but that we may not lose it at a landlord's caprice or at the wish of 
another tenant, and also and more important than either, that we may secure 
permanence and establish the idea of home. For when our children have to 
note the years of their lives "when we lived in the Blank Street house," and 
"when we were living in the Naught Square house" and the rest, it is impos- 
sible that they should have the idea of home that a permanent stay in any 
one spot gives. The house is a residence then and not a home. As it is, 
moving from house to house has become a sort of habit with us, and one of 
the first signs of advancing spring among us is a certain restlessness begin- 
ning to be apparent in every house-holder, together with an anxious inspec^ 



STEPPING STOXES TO HAPPINESS. 101 

tion of those placards that are then blossoming out in the windows, and in 
the advertising columns of the daily news, with more unerring instinct as to 
season than the dandelions have in the parks. As the days grow longer, and 
the robins are seeking us out again, and the swallows are flitting round the 
eaves, these other migratory beings are also on the wing running from house 
to house in search of a proper place for their nests ; that is to say, judging 
whether or not their furniture will look better in this house than it does in 
that, and if all other things are equal, not to say a trifle superior. It is a sin- 
gular commentary upon the insufficiency of our builders that this is so 



Moving. 

People do not move for the sake of moving, for the pleasure to be found 
in ripping up and putting down carpets, packing books and trunks, having 
mirrors smashed and paintings gashed and china destroyed and tables 
scarred, for the sake of going through all the trouble of hanging curtains, 
driving nails, directing labor, repairing damages, living in a world of dust, 
and taking the risks of soaking rains on all their household gods. There are 
pleasanter ways of spending one's time: smoking at the club, visiting one's 
friends, lying on a sofa and reading novels, counting one's money — are all of 
them mere cheerful and agreeable occupations ; and when they are put by for 
all the excitations of moving, it is only because there is reason, and people 
are flying from the ills they have to those they know not of. To those they 
know not of, we say, because they will no sooner be established in their new 
quarters, where all looked as if it might be made so comfortable, than they 
will find the world is hollow even there; and if the drains are not out of or- 
der, then the water-pipes are, or the heaters are, or the next neighbors are, 
or the attic is haunted, and there is a pea-hen somewhere. 

Of course those people would be very foolish who endured a wrong that 
they saw any way of righting, but they should be very sure it is going to be 
righted before they bring upon themselves all the calamities of moving, re- 
duced to a science now though moving be. 

But besides the breakage and ruin and irritation and fatigue, too fre- 
quent moving brings a worse effect to pass, for it has a tendency to uproot 
character, and make one like floating weed ; there is no sense of stability, 
nor much of that recognition of social responsibility which it is desirable to 
have in order to be saved from the Bohemian, and which a more permanent 
resting-place of the Lares and Penates gives. There is a certain moral sup- 
port in the walls that have surrounded us for any length of time, and that are 




(102) 



ON THE WING. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 103 

known to have done so ; we share their permanence and acquire their respect- 
ability ; they fit us now, and the new ones are to be broken in. 

In the annual march of which we are speaking there is too often the mere 
desire for change, and restless dissatisfaction with circumstances that will 
hardly be improved by such means. The surrounding walls are different, 
but the discontent has removed, too, and remains the same. To these cases 
we would recommend the old story of the farmer who, troubled by the per- 
sistent attentions of a ghost, packed his goods for another place, and on the 
way encountered an inquiring neighbor: 

''What! you're flitting?" 

"Yes, we're flitting," says the ghost (for they had packed the spectre 
among their beds). 

"Oh, well," says the farmer, "you flitting with us, too? — Jack, turn the 
horses' heads, and home again!" 

Better than the moving, when the family has increased, and when the cir- 
cumstances are sufficiently improved to warrant a house of twice the size, 
would be the total disregard of unfashionable neighborhood, and the pur- 
chase or hire of the next house, turning both into one. No matter whether 
the street be the most desirable or not, it is the spot where home is, the spot 
to which we wish the children's thoughts to return when absent, and it is bet- 
ter to enlarge, enrich and beautify that than to move into other houses so fre- 
quently that it is impossible for them to call any place home. 



Inside the House. 

Nevertheless in the city it is not so much the location or anything of the 
exterior that has to do with happiness so much as it is the inside of the 
house. Outer sunshine is important there, of course ; but the sunshine of 
gentle manners and pleasant faces is more important still, and the social en- 
joyment of friends that is to be had in the city is something that is impossi- 
ble anywhere else for a length of time. The large rooms, the airy sleeping 
rooms, the hot and cold water and gas, the bath at any hour of day or night, 
the physician at telephone call, comfortable conveniences for getting about, 
cheap means of reaching some of the most superb gardens of the world, such 
as Druid, Fairmount, Prospect, and Central and Franklin parks; all these 
things add a great deal to the enjoyment of life 



The Vacation. 

If one wants more there is the summer vacation for many, in which the 
clerk, the student, the tired house-keeper, the business man, the journalist, the 



io4 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




SUNSHINE OF PLEASANT FACES. 



professional man, can go out and lie in the sun on the 
grass, and feel the pulse of the old planet, or sit on the 

sand, watching - the rise and fall of the sea like the placid heaving of a 
mighty breast, hide in the shadow of the woods, till they feel like the wild- 
wood creatures themselves, launch their boat in the breakers, and know the 
exhilaration of conquering the unconquerable, or slip it through lily-pads, and 
watch their doubles in the depths below, receive the freedom of the fields, as 
heroes are given the freedom of cities, and take hold of the real business 
of life when they return to town with renewed youth ; each enjoying the en- 
joyment of friend or neighbor, as it is narrated to him, as if it were his own 
again. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 105 

Social Pleasure. 

And even when there is no vacation, the city gives a social pleasure of 
companionship when sitting on steps and stoops in the warm evenings, in the 
strolls after ices, in the visits to the roof gardens, the steamer trips, the trol- 
ley rides, that have a pleasure all their own. It is certain that there is a great 
human happiness in the congregation and aggregation of life in towns, of 
which the widely separated rural populace can know but little, while the free 
interchange is stimulating to mental growth and the reception of new ideas. 



Advantages of Town Life. 

The opportunities for growth and improvement are innumerable. Is 
there a painter whose canvases bring the beauty of the world into the com- 
pass of a few feet — the sight and the inspiration are at cur command; is there 
a speaker of world-wide repute, a singer to whom kings and emperors are 
glad to listen, a preacher that moves men's souls, it is ours to listen, too; is 
there a play that thrills, a spectacle that delights, a song that charms, it is 
all within our reach in the city. We gather the news of the world there on a 
larger scale than that on which it is given to rustic communities, and we have 
absorbed and assimilated the last new thing before it has reached what is 
sometimes called the Provinces, and have gone on to something newer yet. 



City Children. 

The children of the city, too, have, in the mass, the advantages of schools 
that are the most enlightening, and of teachers in art whose talent and rank 
make it impossible to have them outside of the wealthy city. Take music 
alone; the best professors of that art must needs find their support in cities, 
and the child who has their instruction frcm the start has the best chance of 
success. 

Music at Home. 

We frequently hear derision cast upon the prevailing habit of instructing 
young ladies indiscriminately in the art of music, and especially of piano- 
playing, when they have shown no very peculiar talent for it. But we think 
this derision a great mistake. These young people would be doing nothing 
better if they were not practicing their finger exercises. They give them- 
selves, undeniably, a great pleasure, and they make themselves able to pro- 
duce a great deal for ctners throughout their little circle. The mistake is to 



io6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

be found in the supposition that it is necessary they should play like Aus der 
Ohe, as if nobody might be allowed to read who could not roll his periods like 
Edmund Kean. It seems reasonable that children should be taught the al- 
phabet of all arts, and go farther if nature prompts the desire. As for the 
piano-forte, perhaps both maker and inventor would feel repaid for their cen- 
turies of thought and work if they could see, as we have done, those tired 
fathers that, hearing their young daughters thrum their tunes on the instru- 
ments they have toiled so hard to buy, close their eyes and listen delightedly 
to the poor little music and feel as if they enjoyed indeed a foretaste of heaven. 
It is nearly a hundred and twenty-five years ago since an announcement 
cf a concert was made in a London newspaper, and it was promised that a 
certain singer would sing, accompanied by Mr. Dibdin "on a new instrument 
called the piano-forte." 

The Piano-Forte. 

A hundred years ago — and to what a growth has that new instrument at- 
tained! Then it was comparatively of rude manufacture, a slender case, 
standing on slight supports, and with keys tinkling like a music-box, and 
scarcely so much like the modern piano-forte as the little tea-kettle engine 
with which the inventors first ran over the road is like the ponderous locomo- 
tive of the present day that bites the rail as it thunders on with a planetary 
tread. 

There had been one or two pianos, though, nearly seventy years before 
that era, but so very imperfect that it took a multitude of new ideas, improve- 
ments and patents to bring even the perfection cf the one of 1776. Still some 
of the great composers had written wonderful music for the instrument even 
in that crude state, whether satisfied with it cr foreseeing its advance. And 
from what it had advanced ! The timbrel, the dulcimer, the clavichord, the 
spinet, the harpsichord, the harp itself, each contributed its separate idea to 
the composition of the wonderful mechanism on which Mr. Dibdin played 
that day, and which has advanced so much farther now that it seems to be as 
perfect as an instrument that does not meet the pure euharmonic scale can 
hope to be, and that stands, when its lid is closed, as some one has described 
it, like the sarcophagus of unrisen music, and whose manufacture, moreover, 
has reached in London alone an average of more than a hundred thousand 
instruments a year, produced by some two hundred makers, and giving em- 
ployment and livelihood, of course, to an immense train of workmen and 
their families. 

It is interesting to note how many various countries enter the lists in ca- 




STEAMER TRIPS. 



(107) 



io8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

tering for our daily music and in finishing the case and works. Take, for in- 
stance, a fine Erard. Switzerland has sent the fir, Norway the deal, Eng- 
land the pear and sycamore and holly wood and the iron, Riga the oak, the 
tropical forests of Honduras the mahogany, and of South America the cedar; 
from Ceylon comes the ebony, from Rio the rosewood, from India the satin- 
wood, from Africa the ivory, from Russia the leather, from America the pine, 
and copper and silver and cloth from almost every meridian. And all this is 
brought together; for this great minds have wrestled, great minds have writ- 
ten, and all to delight the heart of the little miss who longs to rattle off her 
notes as she sees her elders do it, and breaks her little back for hours every 
day in the effort. 

And why not? Why should not great minds write and wrestle for such 
results? Is there any better result than that of bringing the pleasure into the 
household that this instrument does? As you sit and hear it and look about 
on the group of pleased listeners, you think it equal to a hearth any day in 
its power to gather and to cheer; and it has seemed to me in certain family 
circles where the members clustered round the piano-forte as a center that it 
was a sort of household altar at whose shrine the family assembled, and where 
the father looks on his little daughter, who can evoke this magic, as on some- 
thing too precious and perfect to be his, and that the moral health and refine- 
ment of the whole household are assisted by the music, no matter how imper- 
fect it may be when measured by great standards; and I have thought that 
every child ought to feel repaid for all her toil in the happiness she affords 
the fond father and mother in these hours of their satisfaction. 



Music Abroad. 

Music, on a broader scale, moreover, has its best cultivation and its larg- 
est audiences in the town, where opera has asserted a sort of sovereignty 
and immense throngs never think of grudging immense sums of money, glad 
to get music at its best on any terms. For the opera is the idealization and 
apotheosis of the drama ; it is the drama set to music, and where the subtile 
inflections and far-reaching influences of tune and harmony shall do more than 
words can do — shall make the prosaic impassioned, and the impassioned 
divine. 

The Opera. 

Beside the opera, to those that understand its spirit and love its exalta- 
tions, the spoken drama is something infinitely petty; the mask and the co- 




PROFESSORS FIND THEIR SUPPORT IN CITIES. 



(I0 9 ) 



no STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

thurn seem then to belong only to the region into which song lifts them. For 
the opera is, after all, little else than the old Greek play perfected in the mat- 
ter of its representation, and with the eloquence of language translated more 
thoroughly into music. There is the chorus and there are the instruments, 
both of them far transcending the old simple idea; all the appliances of mod- 
ern illumination and machinery take the place of the ancients' open roof of 
the blue in those theatres that were 

"clean scooped 

Out of a hill-side, with the sky above, 

And sea before our seats in marble row;" 

and after all that, all passion and suffering and joy being crowded into the 
action now as then, tone and tune lift it on their mighty wings, and love and 
sorrow are heightened and deepened into the universal sympathy by the magic 
of modulated numbers, the ineffable power of music. 

But in old times all Greece attended the representations of the drama. 
The merits of the new play were discussed by the populace as freely as the 
price of provisions. Balaustion and her listeners were not the only ordinary 
Greeks who knew Euripides and Sophocles by heart ; their verses belonged 
to the people, and they had their roots in the common soil. 

But with us, on the contrary, the opera is as costly as all other exotics 
are; it is designed only for the rich — the boys who sang the women's part to 
the Greeks did not dream cf being able to melt pearls in their drink in the 
way our prime-donne can do if they will — and by force of circumstances the 
poor have little part in it. Nevertheless, among those who do frequent it here 
there are several perfectly distinct classes of patrons: there are those who go 
because it is the fashion, as they would stay away if it were the fashion, who 
go because opera hats and cloaks are becoming, who go because they are in- 
vited, because all their friends are there, because they want to say they went, 
want to be seen, want to be excited; then there are those who go as a matter 
of curiosity, because it is a novelty to them, because they want to educate 
themselves in all those things that touch the finer senses; and lastly, there are 
those who go to intoxicate soul and sense in a luxury of sound, to revel in 
the beauty of motion and light and color, the eagerness of dramatic interpre- 
tation, the satisfaction of song — who go because to them the opera is a real 
thing, a thing they love, and that repays them with an affluence of pleasure. 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



in 



Shopping. 

And there is still another pleasure and advantage of life in the city that 
affords a singular exhilaration and satisfaction — the pleasure of going shop- 




THE MUSIC ROOM CONSERVATORY. 



ping. There is an excitement about this shopping that must be forever un- 
known and unfelt by the masculine shopper, we fancy. 

In point of fact, though, there is no masculine shopper. A man goes and 
orders what he wants, and there an end, but a woman flutters from shop to 
shop and from street to street, day after day and week after week, like a bee 



ii2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

humming over sweets, and only retires from the work at last when not only 
she herself, but all her friends as well, have no money left. 

And what a throng it is of which these shoppers make a part — the haughty 
urbans stepping from their satin-lined carriages; the satchel-bearing suburb- 
ans; the young country school-mistress who thinks the firm would possibly 
become embarrassed if she did not buy her new black silk there, and, the ar- 
ticle' once bought, feels a happy consciousness of benefits conferred, and a 
proud sense of having enlarged the trade of the place in all the markets of 
the world ; then there is the penniless companion of the shopper, who has no 
purse to open, and before whose indifferent eyes all these things — the peo- 
ple, the noise, the bustle, the confusion — pass like disordered phantasms; 
there is the woman who never lets her purchase out of hei sight after the 
money has passed, and laughs to scorn the parcel delivery, and the woman 
who wears a circular cloak and is afraid to go near the counters for fear she 
shall be accused of stealing, and the woman who wears a circular and takes 
precious good care to keep near the counters and watch her chance for steal- 
ing; there is the professional shopper who buys for others on commission, 
and who knows what there is in the place better than the clerks themselves 
know; the young bride who never thinks of blushing as she adds treasure after 
treasure to her trousseau ; the young mother who is nothing but a blush as 
she chooses her nainsooks and long lawns and edgings and insertings; there 
is the w r retched gentleman who accompanies some shoppers as purse-bearer, 
and in all the crowd of women never felt so exquisitely uncomfortable in his 
life ; and there are the shoppers who have no idea of buying at all, but who 
have come only to see what it is that the rest of the world is buying. 

And what beautiful things they are that the world is buying! One would 
say ingenuity in design and beauty of fabric and prodigality of undreamed- 
of colors never reached before the point they touch to-day ; for although stuffs 
have been made more barbarously rich, we doubt if they have ever been more 
artistically beautiful. The shopper whose check-book is not unlimited needs 
to pause bewildered among all the brocades and damasks, to beg for patterns, 
and then to go home and ponder and balance and decide in peace, where her 
fancy will not be disturbed by rival claims, where the jostling of the crowd 
will not have made her nervous and cross and difficult to please, and where 
the elation of the recently given largess for her shopping will not have so 
turned her head that she is pleased too easily and buys too soon. 

And, after all, the whole business is much like a lottery. One starts out 
in the morning quite ignorant whether one is to draw prize or blank; whether 
the bargain will prove a bargain or otherwise; whether what looked precisely 
right in the shop will not look precisely wrong at home, away from its acces- 



STEPPING STOXES 



HAPPINESS. 




LARGEST AUDIENCES IX THE TOWN 



sories, and face to face with the necessities of its future companion pieces of 
dress; whether the silk will not wear shiny, the basket cloth wear satiny, the 
damasse rub up fluffy. One's ideas, too, are apt to build such charming pic- 
tures of unattainable shapes and colors that the result may be heart-breaking. 
One marvels that out of all that wilderness of beauty and lustre in the shops, 



n 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

to which the four quarters of the globe have contributed — muslins from Farther 
India, shawls from Cathay, gold-wrought wefts from Egypt, silks from France, 
furs from the North Pole — one has contrived to reach only such a beggarly and 
unbecoming end. And then to the disappointed young shopper, who has not 
been broken in by a long series of disappointments, there seems to be little 
more to live for, until some rival shopper, when all is over, says how perfectly 
that plume falls along the brim! what a lovely contrast that color is with the 
skin! with what grace that stuff takes folds and falls! groans for such a knack 
of making herself picturesque, and begs for her company when next she rides 
abioad, and knows well that neither theatre, nor dance, nor drive, nor sail has 
any such swift and sweet excitement as shopping has for the skillful shopper. 



In the Street Car. , 

But in all the delight of shopping there is still a drawback, and that is 
the street-car and its discomforts and the discussion of her conduct there. 
She knows that it is said of her that it is she who swings her parasol at the 
car-driver, from the greatest allowable distance, and walks with more or less 
deliberation toward the car while it waits, where a man would have run with 
good speed; that she holds the car, the door open, while she gives her friend 
the last message or the superfluous kiss and takes her parcels, and drops 
them, and has to pick them up on the steps; that it is she who refuses to 
budge an inch to make room for the new arrival ; that it is she who slips into 
the vacated seat without a word of thanks. 

All these things, it cannot be denied, are offenses; yet, if we look into 
them, we may find some little excuse for their existence. "It must needs be 
that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. " On 
our first glance, for instance, at the woman who swings her parasol a square 
off, and walks deliberately to the car, we see no apology ; but she sees one 
perfectly in the fact that every man in the car will make her a subject of mer- 
riment and of unpleasant remark if she runs, that her clothes make it very 
difficult for her to run, and that the laws of deportment, which have had to re- 
ceive the stamp of masculine approbation in all ages before they could pass 
current, make it one of the high misdemeanors for a woman to be seen run- 
ning. For another count in the indictment there is really nothing to be said. 
The woman who keeps the car waiting for her kisses and good-bys and mu- 
tinous parcels is a child who should be taken by the shoulders and pushed in. 
Nor can much defense be made for the woman who refuses to budge, since 
that is an unkindness, a churlishness, in which she is untrue to her sex ; yet 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




SHOPPING, 



the truth is that, having- paid for her seat, she has a right to enjoy it without 
relinquishing a third of it on either side only to have her apparel ruined by 



i6 



STEPPING vSTONES TO HAPPINESS. 



■^^stei^-.----^------ ^- 



^»^.^>- ' 



— , 




^ W \ 



the heavy weight 
crushed upon it, and 
frequently not merely 
a heavy weight, but a 
soiled and contamina- 
ting one. For the last 
accusation, and the 
one more dwelt upon 
than any, it is, with- 
out doubt, occasion- 
ally true that women take a proffered seat and neglect to express their obliga- 
tion. Yet here again it may be said in their behalf, in the first place, that 
they would almost invariably rather stand than force another person to do so, 
and generally take the seat only to avoid a scene and the appearance of anything 
conspicuously ungracious. In the next place, the confusion and embarrassment 
incident probably divert the mind from the conventionality — for a convention- 



SATCHEL-BEARING SUBURBANS. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 117 

ality it is, when the giver in his own mind knows that, of course, the taker can 
not help but thank him, whether she says so or not. Again, it is not easy to 
thank a person who perhaps vacates his seat without a word or a nod, and 
whose back is too quickly turned for him to receive them if there are thanks 
to give ; and one is in as unpleasant a position when sending thanks at a 
man's back as in not rendering them at all. And finally, to say nothing of 
the fact that a woman's fare is as good as a man's fare, and entitles her to a 
seat, or of the circumstance that it is an affair of noblesse oblige with the 
stronger party to care for the weaker, and the man thus does it as something 
due to himself, and not at all in order to please the individual woman, and 
therefore does not make her his debtor, yet so long as men refuse to women 
their obvious equality in human rights, she does not so much wrong, after 
all, as we implied in the beginning, in claiming privilege; and since all that 
she might be and do and rise to is taken from her in exchange for protection, 
a seat is her privilege, for which she owes no more thanks than a convict does 
for fetters. Nevertheless, we think no woman of any self-respect ever fails 
in giving thanks when the opportunity is allowed her. 

In the mean time the men who stare the women out of countenance; who 
put their arms unnecessarily about the women in helping them along their 
way; who soil the floor, according to their unclean custom, where the women 
must tread and drag their dresses, even if they do not exercise their skill in 
targetry on those dresses themselves — such men (and there are, to say the 
least, as many of them as of the thankless women) should have very little to 
say about courtesy in the cars. 



The Cheery Town. 

With all these pleasures and distractions, even with their drawbacks, the 
city-dweller will tell you there is no place one-half so good, so bright, so 
cheery as the town. He will tell you that throughout sacred Scripture itself 
Heaven is described as a city, the celestial city, and the most splendid vision 
of the Apocalypse is of a city descending from the sky. He will tell you 
that all great movements have their origin in the lively thought and action 
of the town. 



The City Parlor. 



And he will tell you that in lesser matters the city, always in advance, 
has reached elegance and an inhabited appearance much earlier than the 



tit STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

country at large, and drawing-rooms were darkened there the first and 
crowded with plenishing, and there were paintings and statuary in them 
before these objects traveled farther, and there were portieres and screens and 
placques and brass-work and bronze and old silver and china and beveled 
glass and needle painting, dark walls and multiplied mantels shelf over shelf, 
short curtains and long curtains, huge vases and little panels and the rest. 
And all this while the rural parlor was ornamented only with the framed 
sampler, and the family-tree, and the lady with the big handkerchief at the 
tomb under weeping willows, with at best four prints in gilt frames or pos- 
sibly a couple of crude portraits or black silhouettes, always excepting, of 
course, those colonial mansions that rejoiced in "Smyberts" and "Copleys." 
Surely the city parlor had the right of it. The moral forces are not necessa- 
rily strengthened by contact with bare and uninviting walls; the nature, in- 
stead of being developed to better things, will be constantly returned upon it- 
self, in the absence of objects stimulating the fancy and leading the thought 
outward. And certainly the intellectual forces in almost every such instance 
are starved, and where one is of such build that he chances to be improved by 
the concentration of thought that such ascetic dwellings might foster, others 
are only dwarfed and withered. 

The age that has become famous for its unhealthy self-introspection 
could hardly do a better thing than make the surrounding material walls of its 
daily life diverting and interesting, while all that hangs upon them or lies 
between them leads the thought out to larger life and experience, to the past 
history of art, to its future hopes, and to its effect upon humanity ; and if the 
harmony of all, the lovely and luxurious combination, excite the pleasure-lov- 
ing senses, the controlling brain also is excited in memory, imagination, in- 
vention, and appreciation. One realizes the falsehood of that old, strict idea 
that one could not be good and be comfortable, understands that enjoyment 
of fine colors and fine contours does not belong exclusively to the Scarlet Lady, 
and that beauty and brimstone are really not inseparable. 



Old China. 



If the city parlor, in its best estate, of course, had nothing else but its old 
china on which to rely, it would have sufficient excuse for its being. 

The fabric itself is so exquisite, in the translucent material, in the enamel, 
in the tints, in the shapes, that one would search in vain outside the kingdom 
of jewels and flowers for anything so alluring to the eye as that bit of china 
in which, when held before the light, the spirit of lambent flame seems to 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 119 

float as it does in an opal, and whose designs, even when not intrinsically 
charming, are always interesting through history and through suggestion, and 
the love of which among our own people dates back more than two hundred 
years. 

There is more quaint and curious tradition clustering round the story of 
pottery and porcelain than of any other of the arts, from the tale of the man 
who, in despair, after ceaseless efforts to produce the quality at which he 
aimed, leaped into his furnace, and produced the desired flux in the consum- 
ing of his own body, and has been worshiped ever since among the less enlight- 
ened practicers of the ceramic art, to the touching story of Palissy the Pot- 
ter, and the noble work of Wedgwood. 

As far back in Roman record as the time when Numa Pompilius reigned 
a king, we find a school or college of pottery founded, from which we can judge 
that the subject was held in high esteem even at that day. The Greeks al- 
ready had potteries at Samos and at Corinth and elsewhere — and we all know 
the absolute charm which the Etrurians had reached in such productions — 
while the most exquisite enamel has been found in the tombs of the Egyp- 
tians. At perhaps still remoter periods, in the gloom of what we call the 
early twilight of civilization, the Orient had reached perfection in pottery, 
and rivaled the best the world has done in porcelain, the tower of Nankin, 
whose tiles are of the rarest faience, being the one concerning which the above 
legend of the sacrifice of a life is related. 

It is not merely for their beauty, though, that these things acquire their 
interest. The historian has made them subserve many a matter of profound 
research. When he finds the remnants of a race — some bones scattered in a 
cave or under a bank of earth, weapons round about, and even traces of food 
— he knows instantly at what point of civilization that race perished, not by 
its stone or copper knives and axes, but by its jars and pipkins or the absence 
of them; for their presence signifies that a race has reached, as we may say, 
the boiling-point ; shows that man then was no longer in the condition of the 
mere animal, devouring raw meat with teeth and talons. And the antiqua- 
rian, meanwhile, in his search among the ruins of the buried Asian cities, is 
enabled by the style of the pottery he finds to say what power ruled, and what 
people obeyed the rule. 

Of course the manufacture of china is something far beyond that of pot- 
tery in importance, but the one is the crude alphabet of which the other is the 
poem ; and pottery itself has now and then risen to a height where even china 
falters, as in those instances of majolica that it has not been disdained to 
adorn with the work of Raphael and Julio Romano and Titian. If one cculd 
but own such marvelous specimens to delectate the eyes, one's ears could 



120 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

■ 
endure all the sarcasms of those in ignorance of such beauty with exceeding- 
equanimity. Addison, to be sure, was among the ignorant in this respect, 
or pretended that he was. " There is no inclination in women that more sur- 
prises me than this passion for china," he somewhere takes occasion to say. 
"When a woman is visited with it, it generally takes possession of her for 
life. China vessels are playthings for women of all ages. An old lady of 
forescore shall be as busy in cleaning an Indian mandarin as her great-grand- 
daughter is in dressing her baby." But when we remember that Horace 
Walpole was of precisely the opposite persuasion, that Kingsley was an ama- 
teur and Gladstone a collector, we can afford merely to pity one who did not 
know how to enjoy the bits of delicate color and light with which we are fond 
of adorning our cabinets. 

What is there, in sooth, that can be lovelier than a cup of that delicious 
sea-green called the Celadon, a concretion of sea-foam out of which the nereids 
themselves might sup, and one of which Robert Cecil gave Queen Elizabeth, 
as being a fit gift for royalty, unless it is that egg-shell cup through which 
the light falls rosy as through a baby's upheld fingers, while the odd designs 
upon them both tell strange tales of life and worship and floral fancies among 
the curious people who make them. And yet one would pause a moment be- 
fore giving them the palm over this claret-colored Chelsea cup, with its gold 
anchor mark; over that delicious Dresden candelabrum where the hand of 
Summer seems to have scattered the flowers; or this vase in Capo di Monte 
china, where the high relief of the figures dancing round about it throws a 
shadow on the tints beyond ; or these miracles of Sevres, exhibited every 
Christmas in the Louvre along with the latest work of the Gobelin looms, the 
cups and vases painted after Watteau, now in bleu du rci, now in rose du 
Barry, now in vert pre, looking as if the wings of birds and the petals of blos- 
soms had simply been cast under a spell beneath the gloss of enamel, and now 
made more precious yet with jewels. 

Where all are so lovely it is hard to choose ; and a collector is tolerably 
sure that if she selects a vase of Henri Deux, with its yellow glory, she will 
long for a basket of Palissy's ware in violet relief ; if she has Dresden, she 
will want Berlin, that she will never think her china closet complete with- 
out a bit of eld Bow with its bee beneath the handle; and that, in fact, hav- 
ing once begun, she will never be happy again so long as the snow-white 
shapes encircle the blue of the Portland vase itself and are not hers. 

And meanwhile the lover of the quaint and the suggestive has united 
town and country in another article of ornamentation — only the good country 
housewife would never have it in her parlor, as the city wife is eager to do. 
Perhaps its adoption yields a little too much to the rococo, but, it is interest- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 121 

ing inasmuch as it makes the necessary article of earlier centuries the play- 
thing of the later. It can, indeed, hardly be anything but a plaything, for 
what machinery already does so perfectly is unlikely to be rivaled by the 
amateur fine lady's fingers; and the thing is now only saved from absurdity 
by its history, which is something inquisitorial in the bondage it imposed, by 
its associations, which are sacred, and by its outlines, which are those of clear 
beauty 

The Spinning-Wheel. 

The spinning-wheel is certainly a pretty sight, whether we should see it 
in a drawing-room or in the moty sunbeam slanting through some old gar- 
ret; and the little linen-wheel which our great-grandmothers used to stand at 
their knees is a real object for an artist. 

Who can see its slant lines, its lovely curves, see its swift revolving cir- 
cles, and the fine thread trembling to a mist as it draws out its length, and 
hear the pleasant hum it makes, without thoughts of sunny mornings, and 
bees in flowers, and all sweet rural sights and sounds? Few of us in looking 
at it think of the imprisonment of the spinner, still wetting her broadening 
thumb as the sunshine fell without, and she longed to be there, too — the 
spinner like her of Mendelssohn's "Song Without Words," who sings her tune 
to the whirr of the wheel while the birds carol and the bees hum outside. 

Rude as the spinning-wheel seems to us now, it was as wonderful an ad- 
vance in its day from the hand-distaff as the jenny and mule and power-loom 
have been in their turn from the spinning-wheel. The distaff, indeed, made 
few improvements in itself in all its long career, the only notable changes 
being that from the time when very primitive people, who had little or no use 
of metal, loaded its spindle with a perforated stone, and others carried the 
load at the top instead of at the bottom of the spindle; but save for these sim- 
ple changes, and the fact that the distaff w T hich princes' daughters used 
was overlaid with gold, the distaff with which Clotho spun was the same 
as that which Burns' Jean took to her "rocking on Fasten's Eve" — "rock" 
being the old term for the distaff and spindle. It was the simplest sort of 
pretty apparatus, not much more inelegant to carry than the modern tatting. 
No dame or damsel went abroad without it. The good spinner loaded her 
distaff with the tow at its upper end, and carried it protruding from under 
her left arm, and as she pulled the thread out between thumb and finger, the 
weight of the hanging and leaded spindle twisted it round and round still 
closer, and she wound it measure by measure about the body of the spindle 
as she twisted. 



122 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

The Distaff. 

The first day after the twelve winter holidays used to be known as St. 
Distaff's Day, for then the women renewed the work that play had so long in- 
terrupted. It was still, in real fact, only another holiday, for the men made 
a point of leaving their own work to set fire to the flax the women were bring- 
ing out, and the women, in turn, provided themselves with buckets of cold 
water to dash over the depredators, and all was good humor. 

'If the maids a-spmnmg go, 
Burn the flax and fire the tow ; 
Bring in pails of water then, 
Let the maids bewash the men,' 

sang Herrick ; by which we may judge the custom to have been tolerably 
prevalent. 

It is observable that the occupation of the distaff and the spinning-wheel 
has associated itself with women even to the point of contempt, our first pic- 
tured memorials of the race on Egyptian and Hindostanee monuments show- 
ing women with the useful toy in hand — the toy despised by all men but 
Achilles and Hercules. "On the side of the spear'* was an old legal phrase- 
ology to signify a descent in the male line, "on the side of the distaff" to in- 
dicate female descent. In the early times, when rapine and all violence were 
the distinguishing masculine traits or, we may say, employments, honor was 
held to come only from such work as bloodshed, conquest and plunder; there 
was none given for the quiet performance of the duties at home ; and as women 
stayed at home pursuing their quiet duties, preparing food and clothes and 
nursing the wounded, the distaff became disdainfully associated with them. 
"The Crown of France never falls to the distaff," said the contemptuous 
French proverb; but it is more than a French proverb that woman's wit can- 
not overreach, and the distaff has in reality frequently and secretly been the 
sceptre there, the power behind the throne, making and unmaking the for- 
tunes of the nation. 

It was not till the fourteenth century that the distaff was superseded by 
Ule spinning wheel , and not till about a hundred years later that the wheel 
appeared at which the spinner could sit instead of stand ; and almost imme- 
diately afterward the term spinster in our language was modified so as to be 
descriptive only of an unmarried woman below the rank of a viscount's daugh- 
ter, and not of all unmarried women — though why unmarried at all is a ques- 
tion we leave for Rosa Dartle; for although the farm-wives of good condition 
were wont to hire their spinning done by any spinner in need of the work, 
there was never a farm -wife who did not know how to do it herself. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. i n 

The Spinster. 

The distinctive nature of the term spinster, as applicable to none above a 
viscount's daughter in rank, is a slight curiosity in history : it is probably due 
to the fact that the increase of wealth and the introduction cf printed literature 
enabled ladies of rank to find amusement and employment otherwheres than 
at the wheel, which was abandoned to the use of those unable to command 
the luxury of their own time — women presumably below the rank of a vis- 
count's daughter. Wonderful things used to be done with the wheel, though 
in those times before machinery made nothing of wonders. One girl was 
known to spin a pound of wool into eighty-four thousand yards of thread, 
almost equal to forty-eight miles ; and another at a later period spun the same 
quantity into a thread something more than one hundred and fifteen miles in 
length — but she was a famous spinner. 



The Adventures of a Pound of Cotton. 

Since steam, that great afrite, has put the hand to shame, these wonders 
have probably been eclipsed, and the adventures of a single pound of cot- 
ton, borne on its wings, and for sale in the London market, are like a tale of 
the Arabian Nights — journeying from the Indies to London docks, thence to 
Lancashire to be spun, thence to Paisley to be woven, to Ayrshire to be tam- 
boured, to Dumbarton to be hand-sewed, back to Paisley, onto Glasgow for a 
finish, and once more in London, having traveled five thousand miles by 
sea and one thousand by land, supporting by the labor spent on it one hun- 
dred and fifty people, and increasing its own value some two thousand per 
cent. '' 

The spinning-wheel, certainly as much as anything, has been a badge of 
woman's servitude. For while all her time was needed to make the clothing 
for her family, there was none for her to spend in illuminating her mind. 
And so it is not unpleasant to-day to see this old badge made the sport of 
circumstance, and what was once a slavery now affording pastime in the draw- 
ing-room. Broken and disused, and in dishonor, and shorn of its locks, as it 
is, it was once a mighty tyrant; and we should think the lovely ladies, free to 
pursue pleasure, art, learning, to mount the ladder to the stars with men, and 
who have adorned their drawing-rooms with the mimicry and mockery of its 
old estate, might in some twilight be haunted by a strange dream of it, pull- 
ing down the temple of their freedom and happiness about them. And as 
they play with it now, in all their liberty and possibilities and comparative 



I2 4 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THE DISTAFF 



enlightenment, they may do well to be mindful of the bondage in which it 
held their "forebys, " and in which its rude forerunner, the distaff, still holds 
certain of their sisters. "The art of spinning," says an elegant writer, "in 
one of its simplest and most primitive forms, is yet pursued in Italy, where 
the country-women of Caia still turn the spindle unrestrained by that ancient 
rural law which forbade its use without doors. The distaff has outlived the 
consular fasces, and survived the conquests of the Goth and the Hun But 
rustic hands alone now sway the sceptre of Tanaquil, and all but the peasant 
disdain a practice which once beguiled the leisure of high-born dames." 



Society. 

Such rooms as those of which the old china and rich draperies and costly 
bric-a-brac make part are necessary in a place where what is known as Society 
takes on its most splendid guise, and where there is such a positive thing as 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 125 

the gay season. For it makes no difference how much want and suffering 
may be abroad in the town or in the land, there is always a gay season in 
town, and probably there always will be one. For as one generation tires, 
another is springing upon the scene, and all the fardels belonging to the glit- 
ter and frolic that these are dropping from their hold those are ready to catch 
as they dance on. The new belles and the new beaux will always have a mu- 
tual attraction ; the old belles drop off, to be sure, but the old beaux linger to 
see these fresh young beauties who are just taking up the business of life 
with such a sparkle in their wondering eyes, such a vitality in their veins, 
and when any of these old beaux drops off, some one of the young belles usu- 
ally drops off with him. 



The Gay Season. 

Yes, there probably will always be a gay season so long as society holds 
together by its present structure, and even those who have and desire to have 
nothing to do with it must witness more or less of it and be aware of it, how- 
ever unwillingly. Artistically considered, it has a certain value, if only as 
showing the possibilities of beauty attainable under the present conditions of 
favorable life. We need not go to the ancients in these times for the ideal of 
loveliness in the outward forms of social mingling. Some daylight sacrifi- 
cial festival by the blue waters of the ^Egean, with torches turning pale in 
the sunshine, with the flower-decked and filleted victim, the dancing youths 
and maidens under the festoons of their floral ropes and wreaths, may have 
been more remotely poetical; a Roman supper may have been more voluptu- 
ous; a Pompeiian revel may have been more wild and wanton; but a mask of 
the gods could hardly be more beautiful than are some of the nightly enter- 
tainments of the gay season of the present. Winter changed to summer, 
night into softly glowing day, bare walls to bowers of bloom out of which 
gleam statues like the gods just alit, and pictures like dreams of a yet lovelier 
life — all this constitutes an enchanted background for the throngs that troop 
across it, the dark shadows of one class of the participants in the pleasure 
throwing out all the brilliance of the other portion with its rosy flesh and 
glistening hair and starry eyes and curving outlines, the brilliance, moreover, 
of the material in which this beauty robes itself, to whose lustrous wealth 
neither the dreams of poets nor the facts of antiquity ever approached ; for 
laces and silks and velvets, at any rate, are of the modern world, and the sub- 
stance in which poets clothe their dreams of beauty is filmy and vaporous stuff 
as thin as moonshine. And meanwhile, if the gay season is an artistic sue- 



126 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

cess, wherever it kindles the wit in any degree and puts a sparkle into con- 
versation, it is intellectual success as well. Those who admire and excuse this 
series of festive pageants declare that there is another view of it worthy of a 
pause, and that is a consideration of its beneficent nature in our social econ- 
omy, in the part of the good Samaritan which it so undoubtedly plays. Does 
this seem an impossible or Quixotic view? Give, then, but a glance to the 
army of workers — glad and thankful to be workers — whom this gay season 
calls to the front; not merely housemaid and cook, coachman and groom, 
milliner and seamstress, but the multitude of those who produce and prepare 
the raw material which these ultimately handle, the multitude of underlings 
who assist them all, till the work ramifies through a thousand far-extended 
avenues, so that some single ball not only calls into requisition the forces of 
market-men, the finest fancies of florists and designers, the running of the 
steamships that import its novelties, but saves from starvation and beggary 
the denizen of many an attic. 

The gay season may in itself — as those who roll to swell its triumph, with 
plume and jewel, with epaulet or train, forget the existence of any others less 
fortunate than themselves — be called as heartless as any other great machine ; 
but, like most great machines, it does unconsciously a tremendous work, and, 
with the industries it necessitates, tides over the dark and cruel winter 
months, when there is little hope and less joy to those who otherwise might 
have no season at all. May there always be a gay season, then, its uphold- 
ers exclaim — not too gay a season, not a mad revel, but a brief and brilliant 
tournament of youth and beauty ! May the early years enjoy it, and the ad- 
vancing years look on well pleased with the pageant! May it charm for the 
passing moment, but not captivate one instant beyond its proper power; and, 
while its light burns ever so brightly, may it not put out the sun ! For, after 
all, there are those of good reason who totally disapprove of the extravagance 
and the waste of time. The philosophers and the political economists deny 
that there is any advantage in the expenditure of wealth after this fashion, 
assuring us that only injury is wrought thereby. 

Mr. Ruskin says that as long as there is cold and nakedness in the land, 
splendor of dress is a crime. "As long as there are any," he says, "who have 
no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket- 
making and tailoring we must set people to work at — not lace." 

Society is of course a charming thing: the reunion of kindred souls in 
scenes made as lovely as artifice can make them ; people always at their best, 
and conscious of it ; with every enjoyment to pass the time — pleasure, excite- 
ment, admiration, the dance, the opera, the theatre, the drive. But it is life 
in too concentrated a form, like the nourishment where nothing goes to waste, 



i28 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

and which, while it enriches the blood, causes the atrophy of certain of the or- 
gans. The experiment having been tried of feeding guinea-pigs with sugar 
alone, it was found that the little creatures lived a short space of time, and 
then those that did not die became blind. Too long and too undiluted a diet 
of gay life would be no better for the soul than the undiluted saccharine mat- 
ter was for the unfortunate animal ; and it is a merciful arrangement that, 
after the faculties have received sufficient stimulus and the senses sufficient 
enjoyment, puts an end to it all with the total and arbitrary change of habit 
that the Lenten season brings. Then the swift rout is succeeded by the quiet 
life, the nightly revel by the morning walk, the call of charity, the household 
duty, the neglected book, and the performance of all those little acts postponed 
when the days only waited on the nights to bring the next one round. Then 
one has time to recall the fact that there are those less favored by fate than 
one's self; then one has time to put one's self in one's enemies' place and see 
what their justification may be ; time to look over one's own life, and learn 
what has been amiss, to make new resolutions, and indulge them a little 
while before beginning to break them ; then there is time to enter on the 
search for those less favored ones, if they are not at the door, and to do what 
may be done toward striking the balance in this life that death will strike at 
last when the earth is cast upon one. 



City Window Gardens 

But there is another gay season for the city lover than that of the winter 
and its routs ; it is when spring opens, and before people begin to leave town, 
and the flower-boxes in varied windows are called into bloom. To be sure, 
all winter long the florists' windows are bowers of loveliness, and so are 
many of the windows of the wealthy, under which the children of the poor 
often stop in admiring groups. But let the chill once forsake earth and air 
and even in the poorer quarters of the town the little boxes at the windows 
begin to show that nature will everywhere repay love and care. How to make 
these flower-boxes answer a purpose, and how to make the miserable little 
backyards beautiful and useful, Miss Louise Forester may tell us in a way 
that shall perhaps help another young gardener in her work. 



A City Window Garden. 

I never was the pretty one, said Louise Forester, or the bright one; 
and I had no accomplishments and no lovers. And I suppose that is what 
made it all surprise me so at the end. Perhaps I was well-looking enough, 



i 3 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

being healthy; although nobody would give me a second glance; and I had 
common sense, of course; and sometimes I used to wish the other girls hadn't 
such a turn for accomplishments, and would help me a little more about the 
house. But then Clara was like somebody made of roses and lilies, so tall, so 
slight, so fair; and Emily could read the most difficult music, and could talk 
about high art in a way that sounded to me like Japanese; and you ought to 
have heard Annabel recite, and have seen her go through the thirty-five ges- 
tures, alarm, fascination, listening, delight, and all the rest. I used to think 
it was Siddons come again, and twice as great, and needing only her oppor- 
tunity — and she was always so obliging, and would give you the gestures every 
time you asked. We all knew that if Annabel went on the stage she would 
make the family fortunes and her own everlasting fame. 

. For you see the family fortunes needed making or mending or some other 
very particular attention. We owned our house and yard in the narrow street 
of the crowded city, and took care of ourselves with the money we made by 
taking in lodgers ; and sometimes we had enough to scrimp along on, and 
sometimes we didn't, and that was oftenest; and then we got on as we could, 
pinching in our clothes, and pinching in our food, and never going an) T - 
where. At least /didn't go anywhere; the girls used to go to the theatre, or 
down to the sea, with the particular lover in favor at the time — for most of 
our lodgers were young gentlemen who came to us with letters of introduc- 
tion, or came to me, rather; since, although I was the youngest, I was the 
one that the girls put forward and made transact the business. They were 
awfully shrinking and sensitive, Clara, and Annabel, and Emily; and some- 
how they always used to feel, and so did I, when we had an unsuccessful sea- 
son, that it was all owing to my inefficiency. 

"I'm sure we might do better if you made more exertion, Louise," Clara 
would say. "If instead of wasting every spare moment, the way you do, over 
your absurd flower beds and boxes, you ever made a business of talking with 
the lodgers and getting them interested in us, they might stay on. We can't 
go and talk about ourselves ; but you, being the ostensible manager, could 
often meet them, or make them little calls when you carry up the monthly 
bills, instead of leaving those bills under the door the ridiculous way you do, 
and so gradually get into conversation, and speak of our circumstances, and 
praise Emily's music, and Annabel's elocution, and wish she could have an en- 
gagement at the theatre — not to say anything that might be said about me. 
But there! what do you care about your sisters, so long as you can attend to 
your flowers ? I never saw such selfishness. Sometimes I feel so enraged 
with the things I could go and trample them down!" and her blue eyes flashed 
like great angry sapphires. 




U 3 

u B 

O ,r 
fa * 

a 



1 3 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Oi course this was very unjust; as if I were not doing - all I could for them 
every day. And I really could have cried if I hadn't also felt some indigna- 
tion at the talk about my flowers — my flowers, the only pleasure or comfort 
that I had. The other girls had their talents, and their flatteries, their peo- 
ple to take them to the park or to the concert, their own consciousness, too, of 
what they were and what they could do, which was truly a pleasure ; and I 
had nothing at all but my flowers. But then the thought of Clara in one of 
her rages trampling down my flowers, and of what it was that might be said 
about her and her tempers, if I chose, made me laugh. And so I went out 
of the room quite gayly ; and I heard her say to Annabel before I closed the 
door: "Any heart was left out of her composition. She hasn't the least atom 
of one. " And Annabel said nothing, but Emily replied, "No, she doesn't 
care for anything in the world but her ridiculous flowers. " And Clara was 
pinning in her belt a big bunch of red roses that I had just given her off my 
bush, and Emily was putting on her hat, which was the third hat she had had 
that year out of my share of the four divisions of the income after the house- 
hold expenses had been paid. But nobody ever thought of such things as that ; 
there was no reason why I should have new bonnets when I looked as well 
in the old one ; and why in the world should I not give Clara my flowers when 
they set off her white beauty so through the open window as young Mr. An- 
nersley let himself in? 

But I had a heart ; and Allen Annersley knew it. For I had talked with 
him about the girls, and had canvassed with him the ways and means of hav- 
ing scholars found for Emily, or an opportunity for Annabel to show some 
theatrical manager what she could do; and he kept a book and music store 
over on the Avenue, where the theatrical people went. It was a long time be- 
fore the girls knew that he kept a book and music store ; they insisted that he 
was the son of the rich Mr. Annersley, on the Heights, who had been a mem- 
ber of Congress ; and that he probably had a whim of having separate lodg- 
ings of his own because it was English. And after the blow fell, and they 
knew he kept a shop, they could not get out of their heads what they had so 
firmly implanted there, the idea of his belonging to something or somebody 
on a different scale of grandeur. 'He is, maybe, an Anarchist," said Anna- 
bel, "or a Nihilist, or a Socialist of some sort. And he has left his father's 
splendid surroundings and is seeing for himself what life means among those 
that have to earn their living. ' ' 

"He visits a great deal next door, and the people there are very well off, ' ' 
said Clara. 

"There are no people there but the housekeeper and old gentleman, and 
he does writing there," said I. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 133 

1 ' You always so contrive to dampen every enthusiasm, Louise, ' ' said Clara. 

"I'm sure," said Emily, "if I didn't think he was something superior to 
most of our lodgers I should never give him a second thought. He is insig- 
nificant enough to be the very pink of gentility. ' 

''How can you talk so?" said Clara. "As if the aristocracy hadn't every 
opportunity for physical perfection." 

"Maybe they have," said I. "But they don't improve their opportuni- 
ties. The fathers and mothers keep marrying for money and for lands, and 
not for love, or good looks or intellect, and they are the result; that's what 
the old housekeeper says next door" 

"How in the world did you know her?" 

"Oh, we made acquaintance over the garden wall, and she told me that 
Mr. Annersley keeps books for her master, and he's not only poor, but in debt 
for his stock in trade, and never had any rich or grand relations " 

"The idea of your talking like that with our neighbors' servants! You 
always did like low company, Louise!" said Emily. 

"But I must say! How perfectly abominable!" cried Clara. " What is 
he here for, with his false pretences! It's a regular imposition — going about 
with his air of seclusion, and keeping a coat of arms in his room" 

"Did you think that was a coat of arms?" asked I. "Why, it's the di- 
ploma of a commercial school." 

"I don't spend so much time as you do, Louise, in the lodgers' rooms, 
studying up their belongings. As if I cared what it was — a low-bred person !" 

"It's very unkind of you to talk so, Clara, when he's trying to do so 
much to help us. He is going to take Annabel himself to the manager of the 
Avenue theatre to-morrow morning. And I'm to bring Emily to his store 
this afternoon, when the Director of the Symphonies is to hear her play, and 
give her pupils if he is satisfied. " 

"Satisfied! I rather think there's no danger that any one Mr. Annersley 's 
likely to know will be anything else but satisfied with Emily's playing!" 

I thought so myself. And I must say I was thunderstruck, after Emily 
had played two of her very best pieces that afternoon, to hear Mr. Deboisson, 
the director, who, at first sitting in dead silence, presently fidgetted enough 
to drive one wild, cry out : "It is utterly useless. It is utterly hopeless! Of 
what can the young lady be thinking? Has she a mind to think with at all? 
It is necessary to be plain. How can she give lessons without talent, with- 
out technique — with absolutely no qualification! Her hand was spoiled in 
the beginning. She has no idea of the master's meaning. She cannot even 
read the music. It is childish play, Mr. Annersley!" and he stalked out of 
the shop as if he had been insulted. 



134 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




ALWAYS A GAY SEASON IN TOWN, 



But Emily, for whose sake I felt so badly, was not in the least disturbed. 
" What a crusty old simpleton!" she exclaimed. "As if nobody knew any- 
thing but himself ! And who knows whether he does or not ?" And she rat- 



STEPPING STOXES TO HAPPINESS. 135 

tied off one of her show pieces in great disdain of him, and went home with 
me scolding about Allen Annersley all the way. For if he had taken the least 
pains to prejudice Mr. Deboisson in her favor, it would all have been differ- 
ent, she said. 

I must confess that, when Annabel came home crying, the next noon, and 
told us that the manager had pronounced her efforts idle, weakly amateurish, 
and out of the question for business, I felt as if Fate was against us, and there 
was some gigantic mistake somewhere. And I hated the manager even while 
I wondered at his blunder, and I cried a good deal myself over my flowers, as 
I trimmed and watered them. But my crying only made Emily indignant. 
"I should think you thought our enemies were in the right," she cried. "/ 
don't cry. What such a person as that Mr. Deboisson says makes no odds to 
me. There are people who say he's no sort of a director ! I shall go on with my 
playing just the same, and so will Annabel with her elocution. And you can 
attend to your precious flowers and not worry yourself about us!" But Anna- 
bel kissed me that night before she went to sleep. 

So I went back to my flowers; and they were the greatest comfort to me. 
I had a box out of every window in the house, and when they were full of 
blossoms it did make the house mightily attractive ; and I used to think that 
was one reason why the lodgers came. But when I said so, the girls greeted 
me with shouts of laughter and with reproaches for my self-conceit ; and Clara 
said she shouldn't wonder if beautiful young women in a house were quite as 
attractive as flower-boxes at the windows. But all around the edges of the 
yard, at first, I had my beds, and at last I covered every bit of space in the 
yard with them. I had a world of trouble, though, because the soil was so 
hard and clayey there ; and I did question if I were not too selfish to live when 
I had a cart-load of fresh loam and some fertilizers hauled on the yard once, 
at a time when the girls had all gone out. But I went without butter and 
sugar for two whole months, so as to be sure that I had not wronged them in 
doing it. And I was sorry then that sugar "was so cheap ; if it had only been 
a dollar a pound, I need not have gone without anything like as long. 

Everybody must have some pleasure, I fancy, and the pleasure I had with 
those flowers of mine was past reckoning; and sometimes Mr. Annersley came 
home when the girls were out, and went about from window to window with 
me, admiring them as much as I did. He knew a good deal about flowers, 
and once m a while he brought home some rare little thing that he had got in 
a greenhouse, and I felt richer than if it had been a pearl; and sometimes I 
found something that I could root, in an old chance bouquet thrown from her 
carriage by some beauty going home from a ball, maybe. One day the 
friendly next-door housekeeper asked me, over the fence, if I would not like 



156 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

to take a drive into the woods with her old master; and as all the rooms were 
in order, and lunch just over, I was delighted. For the old gentleman and I 
were very good friends in a small way, and after we were off the pavement 
he began to talk about my flowers ; he was something of a botanist, he said, 
and he had enjoyed looking over in my little yard and seeing me make some- 
thing out of nothing; and he thought if I were so fond of flowers as all that, 
I might like a drive in the woods (where I had hardly ever been), to see some 
of them in their own homes, although it was still only the last of May. 

How lovely it was in the woods! So still and dark and solemn, with long 
vistas away into golden green sunshine, and, when you were wonted there, 
the murmuring whisper of the treetops, swelling and falling like the echo of 
a wave upon a distant shore. We left the carriage, and went wandering into 
the mossy glades, I often in advance, for my old friend was too feeble to go 
very far, and I came back to him with this and that treasure of the w r ild 
growth that I found — white violets, anemones, straw-bells. "Ah!" said he, 
as I came back once with a strange and charming pink-purple flower, as much 
cf the wet black earth about it as I had been able to take from the ground, 
"now you have a real treasure! That is the Showy Orchis. Yes, lam glad 
you have found that ; and doubtless there are others here. It belongs to the most 
interesting and curious of all the flowers — flowers that mimic animal life. Do 
you know, there is a damp shady corner in your little yard, under the pear 
tree, that you can make rich enough to grow this and several others of its 
kind. We will come again with a big bag and fill it with this peaty soil." 
And so we did, several times, the girls marveling why I liked driving out in 
the country with that old creature, and not at all admiring the weeds that I 
brought back. And in those times I found many wonders, and among them 
one that he told me was the Arethusa, the loveliest purple thing alive, and a 
Calypso, too ; and he was just as pleased as I was. 

Sometimes, once or twice, after he heard about it, Allen tcok me in the 
street cars as far as they ran, and we walked the rest of the way, although 
somehow I never liked to tell the girls ; and it is certainly odd how your 
senses are trained and warned all unconsciously, to find what you are looking 
for; but I had no sooner seen the old gentleman's pleasure over my Arethusa, 
than what should I spy, one sweet June day, but the small white moccasin 
flower, and then the big yellow one, and presently the little yellow one. frag- 
rant as a tropical jungle might be. And I carried them home to the old gen- 
tleman, with Allen, and he said it was an unexampled find, all ir> one day. 
"Three different specimens of Cypripedium," said he, "all in one day! But 
flowers know their lovers. They know to whom to reveal themselves. Come 
July, we will go through the woods again, and I dare venture you'll come 




JOHN RUSKIN. 
(Bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, R. A. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




home with the big 
pink ladies' slip- 
per, a perfect bal- 
loon, and the 
crane-fly, to 
boot!" And of 
course I really did 
— it would have 
been impolite to 
seem to contradict 
' him by not doing 
so, you know. And 
I cam e h om e , 
moreover, with 
the greenish-white 
ladies' tresses, and 
the adder's mouth 
with its tiny green 
blossom, too; and 
one day I found 
myself half crying 
for joy over the 
sudden beauty of 
the white fringed 
orchis; and in 
August — there never was such luck ! — I found the yellow fringed orchis, and 
the ineffably sweet purple fringed one; and by that time the little rich wet 
corner of my yard was a perfect chamber of jewels to me, with more than the 
treasure-house of any Oriental king, with here a quaint rose-purple flower 
whose white lip was spotted purple, and here a sweet-scented, blushing be- 
gonia. For the other flowers in the yard had grown as all common flowers do; 
but these things that I had brought home from the dark, wild wet w r oods and 
swamps seemed to belong to some other planet, and to tell of some other life 
—some strange, fantastic, foreign principle of life. They told of another life 
for human beings, too, different from this crowded brick and mortar one. " A 
life," I said to Mr. Annersley once, "that I suppose I never shall have — but a 
life on a farm in the country with one corner of a garden running down into 
wet woods." He stopped and looked at me, quite gravely, a moment. "Per- 
haps you will have it," said he. "I think it depends on yourself whether 
you will or not." 



BOWERS OF LOVELINESS 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



i39 




FLOWERS. 



Well, well, 
those things were 
not all my wealth 
by any means. 
What pinks I 
had, such great 
globy crimson 
carnations and 
white ones, too; 
one box, outside 
the parlor floor 
lodger's window, 
was all nothing 
else, and another 
box was full of 

snowy sweet alyssum and forget-me-nots and mignonette, and another 
box was all yellow oxalis and blue lobelia, and just as soon as they could 
blow out doors I had all sorts and colors of double columbines shaking 
in the wind, white, golden, blue, purple and scarlet, in the box out of Mr. 
Annersley's window, and over the sides another box brimming with yel- 
low escholtzias and marigolds; I had crimson cypress vines, and sulphur 
tinted canary bird flowers, and nasturtiums of all deep, rich impossible blood- 
colors streaming; and then I had purple cinerarias and yellow coreopsis and 
Star of Bethlehem, all an odd prickly velvet, over its midnight blue, and 
bachelors' buttons and balsams and four o' clocks; and there were pots full of 
violets, full of geraniums, of purple and carmine colored gloxinias; and an 
oleander-tree that when it bloomed was like a rosy sunrise in the room ; and 
in the yard was the corner of my dear wild flowers, and my June peonies, and 
my larkspurs, bluer than blue, and my little rows of sweet peas, and morn- 
ing glory and scarlet runners covering all the sides of the fence, and a vast 
orange trumpet flower and a purple clematis and a wistaria running up the 
back of the house, and hollyhocks, stately as old-fashioned lovely ladies, and 
a dahlia and a prince's feather, each in their season, and last of all my white 
chrysanthemums and scarlet salvias — a perfect little wild garden, every inch 
used, and not a half an inch wasted. I used to look out over the yard in the 
morning and wonder at myself, and I used to look up at the house when I 
came home from market, and think it looked as if it ought to be Paradise in- 
side. But it wasn't. 

I really don't know where they all came from, these darlings of mine. 
This person gave me one, and that person gave me another, and some I 




(140) FLOWERS THE ONLY PLEASURE AND COMFORT THAT I HAD. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 141 

"begged, and seme I bought, and one, yes, one I stole. You'll never believe 
how wicked I was. I stole it walking in the Park. And I tried so hard to look 
innocent, passing the policeman, that I know he knew I was guilty, and I hope 
I made up for it afterwards a little, by scattering a whole handful of its very 
own seed in the same spot in the spring; and I do believe that the great patch 
you see there like live brown and gold velvet in the sun, came from those iden- 
tical seeds. 

Those seeds, and the seeds of the others, too, gave me no end of trouble, 
by the way; for people all up and down the street, and people who passed that 
way, strangers, too, and all our acquaintances of course, used to come and beg 
me for some of the seed of this, that, or the other. And it grew to be a real 
nuisance, it took so much of my time, and I was afraid, too, I would have 
none left for myself. I was doing some up to give away one day, when Mr. 
Annersley came in. "It isn't generosity at all," I said. "I don't like to do 
it. I wouldn't mind so much, though, if I thought they really wanted them. 
But it's only a freak, because our flowers look so pretty. I don't believe 
they'll ever come to anything. They're just wasted. " 

"Sell them, then. Don't give them awav. It will amount to something 
in the year. 

"Oh dear, no — I should be ashamed. "Ashamed of turning an honest 
penny? I'm not.*' "But they're not worth a penny. '' "Oh yes, they are. 
Why, you know there are some establishments for nothing else than the sale 
of flower seeds. Do them up in neat packages, and I'll take them to the store. 
These that want them will want them enough to pay for them. And they 
won't be wasted, either." I should never have done it, you see, but for him; 
he was always looking out for my interest that way. And what did I see 
the next week but a great black and white placard in the shop window : 
"Flower seeds from Miss Forester." The girls were so outraged! But he 
didn't take the placard down for all that; and I kept putting up and sending 
round to him my flower seeds as fast as they ripened, and in the late spring 
he handed me more money than I would believe could come from their sale. 

One way and another, all the time, the house gradually became an actual 
bower. Once some men came staggering in, not looking at all like men, but 
more like Birnam Wood, and they carried between them an immense azalia 
bush, a mound of snow and sweetness, with the compliments of the old gen- 
tleman next door. The girls said of course it couldn't be for me; but as they 
couldn't make up their minds for which one of them it was, it didn't matter; 
and I returned thanks, and did it so carefully not to mention any names, that 
Mr. Annersley, who was writing in there, looked up at me with a laugh in his 
brown eyes, and the old gentleman said, " You 're a little girl as sweet as those 



142 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

flowers themselves, and I know somebody else that thinks so." And then I 
ran away. 

A few days after that Mr. Annersley bought me a tiny Southern orchid, 
just the least flower of one, an air-plant that had no root, and which there 
couldn't be any doubt he gave to me. "There's a fortune in those things, " 
he said, "although I fail to understand why. And if you would like, Miss 
Louise, there's an exhibition of orchids to-morrow, and we might see them 
together, if you will." 

If I would! Of course I would. And I hurried along with him next day, 
my pleasure and ardor not at all abated by the wonder and disbelief and con- 
tempt of the girls, whom he didn't ask, although I should have been delighted 
if he had. 

But I thought no more of the girls when I was once in the hall of the ex- 
hibition. The anteroom, full of startled cyclamens, plats of primroses, dishes 
of pansies, and great jacqueminots with half -yard long stems, was nothing be- 
side this place of enchantment where, tier over tier, rose the weird, wondrous 
creatures with their threads and filaments sailing en the air, with all their 
beauty and diablerie, like flowers and serpents speaking together, each uncer- 
tain if it were not the other. "They resemble, more than anything else, the 
floral ornament of the cinque-cento painting and carving, " said Allen. "You 
think it is a fish, with all its scales and contours and colors, and suddenly it 
is a flower. Nature had done with work when she made them and was in a 
mood of wanton freak and frolic." 

" See that upper one over there, " I said. "It is a flower — but how it is 
trying to be a bird !" 

"Perhaps it is a bird," he answered, "that has just succeeded in becom- 
ing a flower ' ' 

"And there are others in disguise, trying not to seem the flowers they 
are, but other flowers. If they were not so cool, so calm, so refined, wouldn't 
you say they were full of the wildest fun, playing surprises and making jests?" 

"There is a sort of dignity through it all, though, as if they were of a 
separate order of creation, and were only obedient to the elfin law of their be- 
ing. Perhaps the dignity takes root in their prices," he added gayly. 

"Are they dear?" 

"Immensely so. This collection is worth thousands and thousands of 
dollars. They outweigh gold in preciousness. " 

"Oh!" and the falling accent in my voice, I suppose, told him the story 
of my little secret hope of wearing my old gown and boots another while, and 
getting some bulb or shoot or seed among them all. "Oh, that caps the 
whole!" I exclaimed. "That just shows they are the very spirits of flowers, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 




SO STILL AND DARK AND SOLEMN. 



to be capable of such work as outweighing gold. Perhaps they are ghosts of 
the dead and gone gnomes and trolls who handle the gold and gems in the 
heart of the hills in the fairy stories. I suppose that gnomes could have 
ghosts. See that scarlet fellow with the white spathe — they are the witches 
and warlocks of flowers. How I should like to look in here when the moon 



144 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




shines to-n ight 
through the great win- 
dows, and see them at 
their wild play all 
alone! If one only 
had ears fine enough 
to hear their lan- 
guage!'' 

4 'Do you know,' 
said he, suddenly stop- 
ping and turning to- 
ward me, for we were 
in a corner by our- 
selves, "that you have 
something in common 
with these orchids? 
Yesterday a little un- 
noticeable body, sud- 
denly something has 
clothed you to-day 
with a beauty lovelier 
than Clara's. What 
freak was Nature play- 
ing when she gave you 
this color, this smile, 
this sparkle, to hide 
yesterday and come 
to-morrow?" 

"Oh, hush, hush!" 
I said, "You musn't 
speak to me so. No- 
body ever speaks to 
me so. They talk so 
to the other girls. 
They don't talk so to 
me." 
"I can think it just the same, can't I?" he said, smiling. "There you 
go again. The enthusiasm has died down, the flame is wrapped in gray 
smoke, the cloud has come over the sun , the great shining orchid that you 
were, with your illumined eyes and changing blush a moment ago, has turned 



■&?.:, 



A BOX OUT OF EVERY WINDOW IN THE HOUSE. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



'45 




back and become 
the little forget-me 
not. But I have 
seen it before, many 
a time, as I looked 
at you out of the 
windows next door, 
when you found one 
of your new plants 
in bloom." 

"I — I am sorry 
you said so," I 
murmured. ' ' For 
now — p e r h a p s I 
shall never feei 
quite free again 
when — when I'm 
there." 

"Then I must 
never look at you 
out there again, 
and that would be 
a good deal more 
than I would like 
to deprive myself 
of," he said. "So you 
think I am jesting?" he 
said, all his old barriers 
suddenly seeming to give 
way. "Look up at me, look 
up at me a. moment. Why 
do you keep those blue 
eyes veiled so? Lift those 
white lids just for one 
swift, shy glance, one 

sweet shy glance, and see if I am not in earnest." And I tried to, and my 
lip quivered; but determined not to yield I did raise my eyes, and out spurted 
the tears. "Louise!" he exclaimed, but under his breath, and standing be- 
tween me and the crowd beyond. "My darling, I didn't dream I was hurt- 
ing you! Do you suppose I would hurt the thing I love best in the world ?" 






CAME HOME WITH LADIES TRESSES, ETC. 



146 



vSTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



under 
"You 
loved 



"You love best 
in the world!" I 
repeated, in 
amazement, look- 
ing up at him 
through all my 
tears and in spite 
of them. 

"Yes," he 
said. "Does that 
surprise you? It 
ought not. I 
have always 
wanted to tell 
you when I felt 
I might. Does 
it surprise you? 
Why, who is it 
that you love 
best in the 
world?" he ask- 
ed, quickly. 

"You!" I said, 
before I thought 
a word. And 
then, when in a 
moment I could 
have cried out at 
myself, and 
would have turn- 
ed and tried per- 
haps to run away, 
"That is all 
right then," he 
said, coolly. And 
he took my hand 
and tucked it 
his arm in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and walked off with me. 
must have known I loved you," he said. "I never doubted that you 
me. After my stock is paid for and the day for our marriage is 







THE CORNER OF MY DEAR WILD FLOWERS. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



i47 



fixed, I shall tell you all I have thought about you for this long time as I 
have seen you going and coming. I shall tell you I was always afraid you 
would put out wings like any other angel, and fly away and leave me desolate." 

"I — I think you musn't — say any more to me — just now," I murmured. 
"I am afraid I — -I shall do something — silly." 

" Whatever you do," answered he, "will be the best and wisest thing a 
woman could do. But come! I've a greater surprise than this in store for 
you. For I believe you knew this all the time" 

"I — I — never dreamed of it! " I answered, catching my breath, for fear 
it would turn into a sob of joy. And just then we stopped before some shelves 
clothed in moss, and there, in several trays, in pots and baskets, were some 
wild flowers which I couldn't see, and a large card which I couldn't read, for 
the unshed tears and doubles of everything, dancing like sparks before my 
eyes. "I will read it for you then, my darling," he said. " 'Prize for the 
best collection of native specimens of Orchidacese, Miss Louise Forester, 
fifty dollars. * The old housekeeper and I took them up the moment you 
went in after watering them." 

"I — I think I must go home," I half sobbed "It is all too much for me. 
I don't know what the girls will say." 

"I know what the president and manager of the Horticultural Society 
will say, " he exclaimed. "They will say : 'Buy your flower seeds of Miss 
Louise Forester, at Mr. Annersley's book and music store.' And people 
will flock to buy at once, you see if they don't! so many of them that it will 
crowd out all the books and music. And our fortunes will be made in the 
twinkling of a snap-dragon seed!" And so he ran on, to direct the current 
of my too intense feeling. And while he was talking, there they were all 
about me, the president, and managers, and the board of ladies, saying all 
sorts of pleasant things about my pretty orchises, not all of which, of course, 
were in bloom, asking me questions, and waiting for my replies. And be- 
fore I was conscious of it, I was talking with them just as easily as with the 
friendly housekeeper, and telling them all the little I knew. "And I was 
proud of you," said Allen, when on the way home. "There wasn't one among 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 




v\ 



them knew as much as you did, and nobody half 
so modest! You were like a little encyclopaedia 
made easy. The president said you were already 
a botanist who would take rank anywhere. ' 

"It's the dear old gentleman who taught 
me," I said. And then the house was near; and 
it seemed to lift itself so strangely and look so 
like another place, that at first I couldn't make 
out what was the matter. "Oh, the whole world has been changed, Allen!" 
I said. And he drew me inside the door, and in the dark hall he folded me 
close in his dear arms and gave me one long deep kiss — the first lover's kiss I 
had ever had, the first kiss, except for Annabel's, that had ever touched my 
lips since my dear mother died. 

It seemed to me the next day as if everything were happening at once. I 
had hardly told the amazed girls about my prize, and I was going round the 
house in my light-hearted, happy maze, singing with a whole heart in my 
songs, when the dear old gentleman next door sent for me to come in. Allen 
was there, and we stayed for an hour or two, and a lawyer came, and we signed 
our names to papers, and I don't know what and all. 

When I came back Annabel was waiting for me. "I've been making 
you a bonnet," said she. "It made me ashamed to see you yesterday, and 
we flaunting about in all the finery we could catch." 

"I am so glad that you did it, Annabel, before you knew," I said 
"Knew what?" 

"That I am going to be married — and to live in the country, ten nines 
from here, on a little farm that the old gentleman is to let us have till we can 
pay for it. A flower farm it is to be, and the Horticultural Society will sell 
my seeds for me. And as soon as we get it well under way Allen will give 
up his other business, and we shall do nothing else than raise and sell flower 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



149 



seeds. And we H 
expect to pay 
for the place, 
and create a 
greatbusiness, 
and make our 
fortune and 
mak e , be- 
sides, oh, 
such great and 
beautiful flow- 
ers by giving 
our whole souls to it and 
having all out-doors to 
do it in!" 

'Oh, Louise!" she 
cried. "What a life you 
are going to live ! Who 
would have thought of it 
from just the beginning 
of those window-boxes 
and tiny beds in the 
yard? Oh, it isn't be- 
cause of the flowers only 
— it's because you were 
in earnest and never 
thought of yourself! 
And now you are going 
to be so happy" 

1 ' Would you like to 
come with me?" I said, 
Emily can take care of the house and 
themselves here, and you can help me enough to 
have a salary, presently, if all goes right. Allen 
said something about it, his very self." And then An- 
nabel flung her arms about me and we both cried together 
— for all at once I felt that I had found a sister as well as a lover, 
tell you I took care never to lose her. 

But you ought to see my garden now — no little back yard at all, but 
of blossom. There is one half-acre of tuberoses alone that drives the 




"Clara and 



And I can 



acres 
wind 



SO 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THIS PLACE OF ENCHANTMENT. 

before it heavy with deliciousness. And there, at another season, are the 
roses, such roses ! they climb over walls and poles and trellises, and they fill 
whole garden plots, drift-white, and maiden-blush, and cream, and crimson 
red, and purple red to blackness. And sometimes, in late spring, when Al- 
len and I go out and stand in the middle of a bed of violets, and the satiating 
sweeting rises round us in heavenly clouds, we feel, not as if we were in a lit- 
tle flower seed farm that had paid for itself and was making a large income, 
but as if we were in the very heart and center itself of the Garden of Eden! 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 151 



CHAPTER SIXTH. 



Under Green Boughs. 



No tears 
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. 

— Longfellow. 

And not from Nature up to Nature's God, 

But down from Nature's God look Xature through. 

— R. Mo?itgomery. 

I have heard the mavis singing 

Its love-song to the morn, 
I've seen the dew-drop clinging 

To the rose just newly born. 

— Charles Jeffreys. 

The meanest floweret of the vale, 

The simplest note that swells the gale, 

The common sun, the air, the skies, 

To him were opening Paradise. 

— Gray . 

The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul. 

— Wordsworth. 

O Love! what hours were thine and mine, 
In lands of palm and Southern pine; 
In lands of palm, of orange blossom, 
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine ! 

— Tennyson. 

They who best cherish this family tradition, and this family feeling, are 
they who most value the home and its influences and are eager to make it 
all that is good for its various members. For a home is the best of all the 
stepping stones to happiness. Where the home maybe is a matter of compara- 
tively little importance beside the character of the home itself. Wherever it 
is, in city or in country, its occupants will probably congratulate themselves 
that their lives are better spent than if it were in the other place. There is 
so much less to distract the attention and so much more to help toward the 
concentration of thought in the loveliness of rural regions that people there are 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

wont to think the 
absence of frivol- 
ity among them 
is a question past 
dispute, although 
perhaps a cir- 
cumstance o n 
which they have 
no right to pride 
themselves, since 
they can hardly 
claim a voluntary 
agency in this 
affair of the favor 
of Providence, 
but which, if not 
to be set down to 
their credit, cer- 
tainly is to their 
advantage. In 
the city, they 
reason, are the 
unceasing enter- 
tainments of all 
sorts, complicat- 
ed and simple, 
lectures, con- 
certs, theatres, 
operas, crowds 
on Sundays at 
the churches 
where this choice 
singer or that 

draws a large salary, picture stores, galleries, libraries, exhibitions of things 
from the four corners of the earth, morning calls, strolls down thoroughfares 
as good as foreign lands, dinner parties, afternoon teas, one perpetual round 
of change and excitement, not the least part of which is the mere observation 
of the throngs that line the streets, with the equipages and the way-farers — 
streets which to the rustic are a theatrical entertainment in themselves, of 
which one is not immediately wearied ; and in the mean time when life in 




THE THEATER FOYER. 



STEPPING STOXES TO HAPPINESS. 



153 



the country has subsided to quiet sleep, it is under full headway in the town 
for hours afterward. 



Comparative Views of Town and Country. 

In the country, on the other hand, the reasoner continues, how few are 
the changes and how necessarily less frittered are time and attention by the 
need and habit of giving a thought to this and a thought to the other. All 
public entertainments, with the exception of a possible weekly lyceum course, 
are things unknown, and church-going and evening meeting and preparatory 
lecture are the only general assemblages. Social calls are but half-yearly or- 
dinations, although neighbors may go across lots of a winter evening to be 
regaled with new cider and apples, or loiter a half -hour or so about each other's 
gates in the summer dark before the nine-o'clock bell rings everybody into 
bed with its remembrance of the ancient curfew. The missionary meeting 
and sewing-circle exist , but what are gatherings taking place once a fort- 
night or once a month, where every one is expected to be busy, where a good 
book is read, or where there is time for solid conversation, compared to the 
kettledrums and high teas of every day in the city life, where to get into a 
serious talk would be bad taste? For what time there is left to the country 
resident after these mild pleasures — and they occupy but a small fraction — • 
there is an unremitting industry requisite for those who, living away from 
the emporiums in which every desire may be gratified for money, have to 
do everything for themselves, and have not the money for such gratification 
anyway, if the rest were equal, A new book there is not to be thrown aside 
and succeeded by a newer after a light skimming; if it is anything to read 
at all, it is something to exhaust, to repeat, to talk about for a goodly season; 
and news is so rare that when anything takes place, not only the history cf 




154 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



the actors is 
their grand - 
countryman 
the frivoli- 
claim of be- 
t h a n those 




considered, but that of their fathers and 
fathers. On the whole, it seems to the 
as if there was no time in his life for 
ties, and that he has a right to the 
ing more serious and more in earnest 
bred among the distractions of cities. 




dwellers in cities 
will have some- 
thing to say for 
themselves, and 
be heard to set up 
the same claim. 
In the first place 
they will urge on 
their side, possi- 
bly, the preposter- 

ousness of there being any distraction for them in the throng of the city 
streets ; they were born among them ; they have been familiar with them 



THE SWEET LOOK THAT NATURE WEARS. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



i55 



since the day they could walk alone ; every alteration in them has come 
gradually, and stamped itself on their consciousness without any intel- 
lectual effort on their part, or any consequent waste of thought; the 
unending processions in those streets occupy no more of their attention 
than the pebbles of the country read do that of the rustics. If, to 
go on, the day begins later and prolongs itself later in the city, the amount of 
time compassed is equal, and the possibilities of time greater. As for the 
strolls and rides and the shopping, they have their rural equivalents, or 
ought to have, as they merely belong to the concerns of health or of neces- 
sary life. For other things, such as the routs and balls and visits, it is but a 
limited class that have them to enjoy, and with those that do have them they 
are a sort of routine, after all, which from continued custom requires cer- 
tainly little expenditure cf brain tissue, if they do require expenditure of 
time. As the conjurer Houdin, from long practice, could tell every article in 
a show-window at a single glance, and without conscious endeavor at all, so 
the persons frequenting these entertainments do it as a stale custom ; they 
give so much time and so much thought, and no more, and the rest is left 
free for earnest work ; while it is not to be denied that many of the entertain- 
ments are but a stimulus to earnest work, are creators of thought, kindlers of 
ambition, rest and refreshment after effort, and far from feeders of frivolity 
to those who use them as a means and not an end. 

Certainly great things are done in the cities, as it has already "been said in 
these pages; great ideas are started there, great works go forward there, great 
charities have their origin and bring about their wonderful results there, and 
it takes people with but little of the frivolous about them to attend to them 
all. And when we come to individual life we shall find that there is hardly 
any girl in the city who has finished her direct attendance at school who is 
not still pursuing some special study, and that far from superficially, but in 




i 5 6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

earnest, either because her interest is deep, or because some rivalry has 
spurred it, or because it is the custom in her set; or who is not engaged in 
personal charities that require her careful oversight, and use half her day in 
deeds that are neither vain nor frivolous, nor unnecessary to the health of the 
world. 

The measure of human nature is probably the same wherever it is found, 
ana the men and women of the country are not very different from those of 
the town. Condemnation of either by the ether is the most frivolous affair 
that either encourages, while it will surely do neither of them any harm if a 
serious rivalry should exist between them as to who shall make the most of 
life, and leave the world better behind him. For our own part, were we called 
to decide the dispute, since the farm is needed for the city and the city for 
the farm, we would let them balance the matter between them and would 
decide for the golden mean — that is — home near a large suburban town, 
not too remote from a great city on occasions, but sufficiently remote to let 
one enjoy rural life and indulge the love of nature. 



The Love of Nature. 



Indeed, is not this love of nature itself a stepping stone to happiness? 
Few things so soften the asperities of life. Let other things go awry, let 
the roof leak, the dinner burn, the goodman grumble, and after a glance from 
the window at some lovely landscape that chances to lie below — a good long 
gaze in which the beauty works its spell upon the soul — all the troubles seem 
light and easily to be borne: that is, if one really loves nature, and does not 
merely pretend to do so. They with whom the love of nature is a passion 
find her rising to meet them in all their joys, to quiet them in all their vexa- 
tions, to solace them in all their sorrows. "What I wanted when my father 
died," said a musician, "was to hear a certain piece of music. If I could have 
heard that, it would have seemed like a precious friend comforting me. But 
I could not, and so I was desolate, and my heart fed on itself. " And it is just 
so with the love of nature in any similar stress. The soft meadow scene of 
a champaign country, where the purple vapors veil the distant edges, and the 
sunbeams slant across them with that straight-cutting line in which light pen- 
etrates a jewel ; the infinite jcy of the wide sea scene, with the everlasting 
play of its frolicking waves by day, its infinite melancholy, tenderness, and 
my stery by night ; the magnificent inclosure ot the mountains, lifting their 
heads into heaven to catch the light and translate it for the beholder, com- 
panions of the stars and yet companions of ourselves — all these speak to heir 




" M V!'-:! 



THE LONELINESS OF RURAL REGIONS. 




058) 



A SEWING CIRCLE. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 159 

lover as some delightful friend might speak, as some great all-wise friend, in- 
deed, sometimes the very voice of God Himself. They comfort insensibly, 
when comfort is needed, too, not by the mere pleasure of the eye, but, as 
beauty always must, by composing and resting, by silent influence, and by the 
inevitable consciousness that the existence of such a thing shows an ever-liv- 
ing and ever-loving care ; and beholding the scene so perfect, it would seem 
as if we were, almost unaware to ourselves, called upon by all these viewless 
forces to do our best toward perfection, too. We have known a person, very 
sensitive to all these forces, who in a season of religious despair was made 
whole merely by a winter's walk in the country, looking toward sunset, where 
the snow-white and innocent fields grew faintly rosy and smiling, and a ruddy 
orange lay low in the west, like a vast hearth-fire, and in its suggestion of 
warmth and home and shelter, made the sufferer in some way feel that the 
universe was under care, and every atom of it was regarded as precious and 
not to be spared by its Maker. And are we not, all of us, atoms in it ? 

And if the lovers of nature can be satisfied in such wise in the time when 
her pictorial and delightsome effects are less easy to be felt, what joy can they 
experience in the other seasons, when she is an utter spendthrift of beauty, 
like a player at whist who plays trumps because he has nothing else at all in 
his hand ! What a luxury of life is theirs in the spring, when the callow wil- 
lows make a sort of green sunshine near and far, and scatter their delicate 
fragrance through the land ; in the summer, when the boat slips along the 
dark shadow of the branch-hung bank, the shadow full of deep olive tints, 
with now a yellow star-glint beneath, and a heaven of stars bright as the 
brede of some immortal scarf hung overhead ; or in the fall, when the sun 
shines through the gilded and reddened leaves and transfigures them to flame, 
and earth seems a vast garden of brilliant bloom, whose vividness is only 
softened by the tender hazes everywhere dropping and folding about it! If 
all the ineffable charm of such scenes will not, indeed, pluck out a rooted 
sorrow, it will, at all events, if once really felt, go far towards alleviating the 
sorrow, acting perhaps as chloroform is said to do in spasmodic diseases, ob- 
taining possession of the brain first, and rendering it in some way less acute 
to the touch of the other. 



Micnelefs Twilight Experience. 

To those who sincerely and understandingly cherish these influences of 
nature, with whom the love is no intellectual pretense, she assumes a real 
personality — a personality so strange that sometimes when night or twilight 
is superadded, this thing that is so dear to us puts on a mystery that becomes 



160 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

weird and uncanny, as if we were visited by the ghost of one we loved. "La 
petite chaine, par exemple, qu'on appelle le Rocher d'Avon, nous avait saluee 
le matin, dans la senteur des bruyeres, de la plus gaie lumieredel'aube, d'une 
ravissante aurore qui rosait le gres; tout semblait sourire et s'harmoniser aux 
etudes innocentes d'une ame poetique et pieuse. Le soire, nous y retour- 
nous, mais la fee fantasque a change. Ces pins qui nous accueillirent sous 
leur ombrelle legere, devenus tout a coup sauvages, ils roulent des bruits 
granges, des lamentations de mauvais augure. Ces arbustes, qui le matin 
invitaient gracieusement la robe blanche a s'arreter, a cueillir des baies ou 
des fleurs, ils ont l'air de receler maintenant dans leurs fourres jene sais quoi 
de sinistre — des voleurs? ou des sorcieres? Mais le changement le plus fort 
est celui des rochers qui nous recurent et nous firent asseoir. Est-ce le soir? 
Est-ce l'orage imminent qui les a changce? Je l'ignore; mais les voila 
devenus de sombres sphinx, des elephants couches a terre, des mammouths 
et autres monstres des mondes anciens qui ne sont plus. Ils sont assis, il est 
vrai; mais s'ils allaient se lever? Quoi qu'il en soit, l'heure avance, 
marchons . . . L'on se presse a mon bras." 

This singular personality which Michelet here gives the rocks and stones, 
others have been known to give to members of the vegetable kingdom. All 
growing things are alive to them, and full of purpose and intelligence ; a 
flower is not to be plucked with inadvertence; a river rolls because it is called 
by the sea, as youth is called by love ; and even the trees assume the same 
intelligence that elder mythology gave them in peopling the green or hollow 
stems with dryads. A botanist once declared to us that he had seen a tree 
manifest all the intelligence of a human being. This tree grew in the chink 
of a rock on the brink of a slight precipice, with a mere handful of soil to 
nourish it, and it was nourished so poorly that it spindled and had few leaves, 
and seemed altogether worthless. One day the person claiming the "animula, 
vagula, blandula" for the little sapling saw a thread that had been put forth 
from among the roots — a mere slender white thread — creeping over the brink 
of the precipice and dangling there, blown about by the wind, and growing 
longer every day. At the foot of the precipice was a spring of water and some 
deep, rich soil ; on the hither side the soil was boggy, on the farther it was 
rich and suitable. The little thread did not merely drop into the nearest 
place and take root in the boggy hither side ; it wavered and wavered and 
pushed out till it landed at last on the other side of the spring, where the 
ground was firm and good ; and before long the fine thread was a coarse one, 
the coarse one was a yarn, the yarn was a cord, a rope, a great stem, and in 
time it looked as if it were the tree itself and not a mere rootlet that it thrust 
down where it felt the water. Very soon after it struck root, the sapling, re- 



"V. / 



• 



£k Jl 






1 




162 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



f 



HftWI 



'M Hi 



■M 



1 



ceiving the rich food and 
drink of the spring, sent 
out a fresh head of 
leaves, presently fresh 
branches, and began to 
flourish with a vigor that 
had never been dreamed 
of for it — with such a 
vigor that the winds 
caught in the full-leaved 
head of the top-heavy 
little thing, and it was 
in danger of being up- 
rooted. What now did 
intelligence do ? It put 
forth a rootlet on the 
other side, curled it 
round and round the 
main stem in the crevice, 
till finally, as the root 
grew large and thick, it 
looked as though it had 
been poured fluid into 
the mould of that crevice 
to anchor that tree, 
which it did securely, 
and probably for genera- 
tions. 

If we may not accord 
intelligence, rather than 
the mere accident of situ- 
ation, to the work of this 
sapling, yet do we all of 
us on occasion personify 
some noble oak or 
pine, as Olive's lover did the oak that stood knee deep in fern and brake; 
we all of us personify a mountain eternally couchant, and we all of 
us find the love of nature a free-masonry that even when circumstances, 
station, and education are all at odds, make us the children of one 
mother. 




MOUNTAINS LIFTING THEIR HEADS INTO HEAVEN. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



163 




WHITE AND INNOCENT FIELDS. 



Sunlight. 

If we have decided that that home is happier which is in a measure in the 
country, we must further resolve that the home shall be full of sunshine, both 
of the soul and of the heavens. There is more than idle fancy in the old sun 
worship of the Persian and of the Mexican, the inhabitants of two regions 
with the diameter of the globe between them, but where kindred climate gave 
birth to kindred instincts. There, with the sun powerful and beneficent above 
them, at the touch of whose rays earth seemed to blush with bloom, like at- 
tendants upon which the winds came laden with perfume and delicious 
warmth, with whose reign life resolved itself into a mere pleasure of exist- 
ence, under such circumstances, and with no revelation of another form of re- 
ligion, it was not wonderful that to these people the sun seemed to be the 
splendid shroud of a divine power dwelling within it. 

They saw the sun the center of the universe, and all things seeming to 
revolve around him. They saw the seed lying, for eons it might be, in the 
bosom of the mother earth, but never springing into life till touched by the 
fructifying power of the sun. They saw those portions of the earth remotest 
from his influence wrapped in ice and frigor, desolation and darkness, while 
between such parallels as lay perpetually beneath him a prodigious vegetation 
and life and beauty reveled ; and they felt that behind this creative power the 
Creator Himself must be ensphered — the Creator, the Friend, the Benefactor, 
the Father of all, Who when He came brought hope and joy with Him, and 
when He went left darkness and doubt and fear to creep in behind Him. 




« A a 



T:7% Tp&g -/p» 



^ 



A LUXURY OF LIFE IS THEIRS IN THE SPRING. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 165 

After all, it was at once the simplest and the most beautiful of the an- 
cient and heathen religions. It had none of the complexity of the Grecian 
paganism that, a natural offshoot under iEgean winds and skies and the artis- 
tic fancy indigenous there, became an utterly artificial manufacture when 
transplanted into the Roman atmosphere. It had in its early form none of 
the mysticism of the Hindostanee, none of the barbarity of the Polynesian 
and its related religions. It was the idea that must have suggested itself at 
once to the reason and the imagination of primitive man in a happy and com- 
fortable condition. It cumbered itself with no personalities, and it perplexed 
itself with no dogmas. Before the revelation of the truth, of a religion of 
self-sacrifice and endeavor, nothing could have been purer or more joyous than 
this worship of the sun. 

We have learned better now than to worship the instrument as the orig- 
inator. But for all that, the most of us remember our home in the East, that 
great breeding-place of the race ; some traditions of it cling to us yet, and 
among them we have a veneration for the sunshine, the ancient and unal- 
terable sunshine. Whatever melancholy there may be in our composition as- 
serts itself at the twilight hour when the sun is withdrawing from us. All 
our gladness and gayety break forth in the morning hour when his smile 
kindles the heavens. The dark days when cloud hides him throw their veil 
over our own spirits also, and it seems in that thick weather as though noth- 
ing would go amiss if only the sun were out. Nor is it anywise strange that 
it should be so ; for apart from the physical pleasure it affords, this sweet, 
soft, penetrating sunshine is the emblem of all tenderness and strength, of 
all benevolence and impartiality ; like the rain, it falls on the just and on the 
unjust, and wherever it falls a blessing springs up to meet it. For when the 
sun shines, we can all of us cry out with the joy of the old Earth in the 
"Prometheus:" 

7. "It interpenetrates my granite mass; 

Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass 

Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers; 
Upon the winds, among the clouds, 'tis spread; 
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead — ■ 

They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers !" 



MB 

■ 




(166) 



THE DARK SHADOW OF THE BRANCH-HUNG STREAM. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 167 



CHAPTER SEVENTH 



Vine and Fig Tree. 

Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes 
That on the green turf suck the honied showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, 

The glowing violet, 
The musk-rose and the well attired woodbine, 
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears. 

—Milton. 

God Almighty first planted a garden. 

—Bacon . 

There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners. 

— Shakespeare. 

And add to these retired Leisure 

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. 

— Milton. 

When tillage begins other arts follow. 

— Daniel Webster. 

No daintier flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, 

No arborett with painted blossoms drest, 

And smelling sweete, but there it might be fouwnd. 

To bud out faire and throwe her sweete smels al arownd. 

■Spenser. 

But if the house is in what is called the country or on the country's edge, 
we shall find another stepping stone to happiness in the possession and cul- 
tivation of a garden, and if we live in town, still we love a garden. Every 
man loves his own garden. It is the delight and the desire of the farmer's 
wife and the dream of the old sailor coming off the sea. The turning up of 
the earth is in obedience to one of the natural instincts, perhaps almost the 
only inheritance we carried with us out of the Garden of Eden. Gardening 



168 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




^>H 



indeed, or rather the pretty potter- 
ing round a garden, directing some- 
body else with the heavy work, and 
attending one's self to the pictur- 
esque, is an occupation than which 
there is none pleasanter, as all those 
know who are blessed with a bit of 
ground. The first pulling over of last year's flower bed is like coming back 
from long absence and enjoying the society of a mother; and as strength and 
vigor come to us while we meddle with the soft brown soil of the healing 
and purifying earth, we easily understand that Antaeus as well as Adam was 
a gardener. 



The Garden. 

Nor is there anything more soothing than this same occupation for a 
mind vexed and worried by many cares. The breaking up of the ball of loam, 
the raking together of scattered waste, the sowing of seeds, the cutting of 
weeds, the removal of worms, the trimming of branches — all that distract the 
thoughts from trouble, together with the slight fatigue of bodily labor — calm 
the nerves and reduce things to harmony. 

And while the occupation is both pleasing and soothing, it is the one work 
of all which has most promise and most accomplishment in it ; we know that 
little is done there in vain, the reward is constantly before us, and the fulfill- 
ment of the first part comes while we are working on the last. We see the 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 169 

thing grow tinder our hands — the seed sprouts, the bud sets, the flower blooms, 
the fruit ripens, and all so that we can count ourselves, if not like the Orien- 
tal conjurers under whose hands the seed springs from shoot to fruit in twenty 
minutes' time, yet, at any rate, as if we had had a small hand in helping on 
the seasons and the fruits of the earth, each after its kind. 



An Old-Fashioned Garden. 

And what in the world is there lovelier than an old-fashioned garden — one 
not so carefully kept as to be a nuisance rather than an enjoyment? Over the 
old walls clamber the grape-vines and the scrambling blackberries, beneath 
them are the currant bushes, and here and there is a rare plum or pear tree, or 
honeysuckles, trained on tall trellises, to keep a sentinel's watch on the rest. 
Here stand the queenly hollyhocks in all their splendid hues, here the sweet 
stocks; here beds of carnation spice the air all day long; and pansies, violets, 
roses, southern-wood, evening primroses, and lilies — all in their turn, and 
sometimes altogether — make the mere breath a luxury; while in some neg- 
lected corner a forgotten sunflower absorbs all the warmth and wealth of its 
region, and suddenly spires up and spreads its broad disk like a fiery illumin- 
ation. We do not care for scientific work in our old-fashioned garden, nor do 
we perplex ourselves with massing and separating the colors much: the sight 
of them all, as nature happened to throw them together, is pleasure enough ; 
while in the distance the modest kitchen-garden throws in a sturdy back- 
ground of greenery, with its fluttering bean and pea blossoms, with the great 
green roses of its cabbages, with the reddening beet-tops, the feathery car- 
rots, and the waving plumes of corn. 

When the chief care and labor are over — not great at any time, certainly 
— to sit on summer days with book or work in a garden chair on the reserved 
grass-plot of such a place, is a satisfaction that few who are not bound by 
the city have need to deny themselves. i\nd when we add to the satisfaction 
of the senses the fuller satisfaction of looking en a scene that would not have 
been but for our own hands, of feeling that we have added by our personal 
exertion to the beauty and to the wealth of the world, that summer is more 
summer for our flowers, and mankind is richer for our potatoes and tomatoes, 
we wonder everybody does not hasten to the study of the almanac and the 
task of laving out a garden ! 



The Almanac. 

For in the habit of studying the almanac lies a part of the pleasure of 
having a garden. When we open the Old Farmer's or the first pages of our 



i 7 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

handy volume diary, we hunt up our birthdays, consider on what days the 
festivals of the next year may be found, look to see if any eclipses will hap- 
pen in our part of the world, and take more or less unconscious pleasure in 
the cabalistic pages, some of which still, in spite of all that has been done 
for us, we understand no better than the peasant, who, bewildered with his 
first one, cried, "Well, well, it maffles and talks; but all I could make out is 
that Collop-Monday falls on a Tuesday next year. " 

The almanac as we have it was not enjoyed by our grandmothers. If they 
wanted such a thing at all, they had to be content — and doubtless were — with 
one full of fortune-telling and astrology, to which the days and tides and 
moons were quite subsidiary — lucky if they could read it any way. For in its 
present state the almanac is almost a modern invention, since, although the 
Greeks of Alexandria had one as early as the first century, it would hardly be 
taken for a poor relation of ours. In Rome, in the primitive times, an officer 
proclaimed the day and the weather in the streets, and a placard of the fact 
was put up in public places. But the first almanac worth attention at all 
must have been that of Solomon Jarchus, issued in the middle of the twelfth 
century. Even the origin of the thing's name is a subject of as much mys- 
tery as any other of its facts, these holding that it belongs to the Arab alma- 
nah — a record— and those, that it is from the Saxon al-mon-aght — the heed of 
the moon — all the changes of our satellite having long been carved on a stick 
thus named, indeed, a stick or "clog'* having been brought in from Denmark 
so artistically carved with symbols of time as to be a subject of a good deal of 
scholastic interest. 

In a library at Oxford is an almanac computed by Peter of Darcia in 
1300, and in this that mythical, allegorical, and, to most, inexplicable figure 
called the "man of the signs ' makes his debut. Oxford, indeed, after this, 
gave its authority to all the English calendars of the Middle Ages, and one 
made there in the last years of the fourteenth century had the calendar of the 
rainy days to be expected, and the precise statement of what season it is good 
to build or marry in, and all the science of the day, the "Houses of the Planets, 
events from the birth of Cain, short notes on medicine, movable feasts, and 
blood-letting, ' ' which, after all, was not so unlike some still among us. However, 
the second, if not really the first, one printed on the European continent came 
from Buda, in Hungary, and was calculated for three years, containing little 
but the eclipses and the places of the planets. But we may' well take heart 
of grace in this age of free distribution when we remember that this sold for 
ten crowns in gold. 

The Sheapard's Kalendar, translated from the French, is thought to be 
the first one printed in England, which did not have printed ones till fifty 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



171 





years 
France. 



- 






EVERY ONE LOVES A GARDEN. 



after 

In 1558 
comes one that 
carrieson its title- 
page the words, 
"Wherein is ex- 
pressed the 
Change and Full 
of the Moone, 
with their quar- 
ters. The varie- 
tie of the Ayres 
and also of the 
Windes through- 
out the whole 
yere, with Vnfor- 
tunate Times to 
Bieand Sell." 

Nevertheless, 
in Leonard 
Digges' time, a 
half-dozen years 
earlier than this 
last brochure, 
there had already 
arisen numerous 
doubters and 
sneerers at the 
astrological por- 
tion of the al- 
manacs, whom 
this worthy 
stoutly com- 
bated. Having 
declared that the 
rising of Orion, 
Arcturus, and 



Corona provoked tempestuous weather, and the Hyades rain, "Who is ignor- 
ant," he exclaims, "though poorly skilled in astronomy, that Jupiter with 
Mercury, or with the sun, enforces rage of winds ? What is he that perceives 



i 7 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

not the fearful thunders, lightnings, and rains at the meeting of Mars and 
Venus, or Jupiter and Mars ? Desist, for shame, to oppugn these judgments 
so strongly authorized!" 

In France, the astrological character of the work had allowed the taking 
of great liberties, and it was found necessary to forbid the prophesying 
against affairs of state or of people — the fulfilled prophecy of the downfall of 
the Du Barri having given great encouragement to true believers. But in 
England full latitude was never interfered with by the state, except that a 
monopoly of the publication was given the Company of Stationers and the two 
universities, the latter, however, soon selling out to the former. This done, 
there came to be two strong parties in the matter of almanac-making, the 
philomaths and the astrologers, and hot was the warfare between them. But 
in the time of the civil wars superstition was still rampant, and those with 
the most gloriously impossible predictions were the most eagerly bought. 

Poor Robin's Almanac did, perhaps, as much as anything else in the exter- 
mination of this kind, it was published in 1664, and although often low and 
coarse, had much good-humored raillery at the ignorant sort. "We may ex- 
pect," it ran, "some showers of rain this month, or the next, or the next after 
that, or we shall have a very dry spring." Robert Herrick had a hand in 
this, as Decker had in a slightly earlier one of a similar nature. John Eve- 
lyn, of "Diary" fame, had already published one of an entirely serious and 
suitable nature for the sole use of gardeners. At last, in 1708, Dean Swift 
tried his hand at this literature, and issued one in which he satirically de- 
clared that a certain Partridge, an importer in the line of astrological alma- 
nacs, should die on a fixed day, at eleven at night of a fever. Partridge, after 
that fixed day, certified to the fact that he was still alive. In Swift's amusing 
epitaph on the man are the lines : 

"And you that did your fortunes seek, 
Step to his grave but once a week, 
This earth, which bears his body's print, 
You'll find has so much virtue in't, 
That I durst pawn my ears 'twill tell 
Whate'er concerns you full as well, 
In physic, stolen goods, or love, 
As he himself could when above." 

Half a century after all this, Andrews was doing work on the regular al- 
manac so as to increase its circulation to five hundred thousand, although him- 
self never receiving more than twenty-five pounds a year. Yet the first really 
decent one of all appears to have been our own Poor Richard* s Almanac by 
Benjamin Franklin ; and it was not until the first quarter of the present cen- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



i73 



tury that the astrological parts disappeared from 

the usual British almanac, while we all still tol- 

f f!^P> erate the promise of snow or rain "at about this 

* -f time." We may, then, thank the stars, that are 

no longer consulted in 
the making of almanacs, 
that we may open our 
diaries, or our little 
Lady's Almanac, and no 
longer be tormented with 
predictions of the de- 
struction of the world, 
being glad that almanac- 
makers, at any rate, have 
relegated that work to 
the astronomical savants, 
who may tell us that the 
earth is drying up to- 
day, and dropping into 
the sun to-morrow, with- 
out troubling us a whit 
if we do not have to read 
J the fact every day of our 
md' .# lives in finding the day 
|k£La: . ,,. of the month. 
gg^ ;' But for all this we 
have known the almanac 
do strange things in its 
way. Indeed, we knew 
a family where it was 
not only a cloud-compelling Zeus, 
ordaining the weather, making the 
days of the month walk up to the 
mark, and bringing about eclipses 
and convulsions of nature at its 
will, but where it really wrought 
nothing less than magic. It al- 
ways hung by the side of the huge chimney-piece, along with other mystical 
paraphernalia of that hearth ; and when an offence had been committed whose 
perpetrator was undiscoverable by common earthly means, the family of chil- 









THE MODEST KITCHEN GARDEN. 



174 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

dren were summoned, and were ranged in a solemn row before the head of 
the house, who took down the almanac, read aloud those terrible things about 
Aries and Libra and Scorpio and Gemini, and made the awful signs of the 
Zodiac with the tongs in the ashes, and turned the leaves and consulted the 
quarters of the moon and flow of the tides, all interspersed with swift-scru- 
tinizing glances at the waiting row, till suddenly the pale and trembling 
culprit of the ordeal was singled out by name ; and great was the birch rod, 
and the almanac was its prophet there 

But it hardly needs the almanac to tell us that when snow is gone, the 
sun is shining and the birds are building; then it is time to begin to turn up 
the earth, and let the air of heaven in to nitrogenize the under side of the 
clods. 



The Apple Tree. 

It is often a pathetic sight as one drives along the rural roads to see the 
effort that the wife of the laborer, or the small farmer, has made to get her 
little garden with its patch of color. But if it be in the spring-time that one 
drives, the pathos is some time lost in the beauty of the apple orchard that rises 
behind the garden and throws it into foreground. For who, living in the 
country or the large country town, in the parallels of its habitat, pretends to 
own a home without an apple tree ? 

And who owns an apple tree and does not wish for two? And who would 
own a farm without an orchard ? And who that has one does not feel a 
kind of family affection for the old gnarled and moss-grown stem which has 
so rooted itself in the soil, and has so long been a part of the family life, as 
to seem little less than an ancestor ? 

There are harvests the world over, each having a peculiar charm and 
beauty of its own. In one place it is the harvest of the vineyard on the cas- 
tled slopes of the Rhine, on the hills of France, or the volcanic sides of Vesu- 
vius, in the fields of Greece — harvests around whose bald facts are woven 
images of beauty in form and hue that painters and sculptors and singers have 
been swift to seize. Then there is the harvest of the grain field, with its 
reapers, its sheaves, its wains, its sweet old stories, such as that of Ruth in 
the corn ; its pictures, such as that famous one of the ' ' Blessing of the Wheat' ' ; 
its vast Western existence on this continent of boundless horizons, and won- 
der-working machines tossing sheaves to right and left like giants at play. 
If less universal than these, yet hardly less beautiful, is the hop harvest, with 
its lovely blooming bunches in a sort of simulation of the grape, and the 
scenes of its merry pickers down their long green lanes. But quite as full of 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 175 

attraction as any other is the apple harvest of New England and those regions 
where the apple-tree is as much an institution as the house itself. 

From the first flake of the pink snow that drifts across their boughs iv. 
May with clouds of fragrance and songs of nestlings and lights of glancing 
wings, to the heavy drooping of their branches dropping thick shade in the 
deeps of summer, to the time when they are starred with their ruddy wealth, 
the apple-tree is a pleasure to the eye and to the senses — perfect in its spring- 
time beauty, and with an air of homely heartiness and health the rest of the 
year; a matronly, motherly thing, happy, it would almost seem, in giving 
happiness, as if it knew how grateful was its summer shade, its autumn 
juices ; as if it knew the good times it furnished to the gay guests of the ''par- 
ing bee" ; to lovers sitting by the fire and watching their greenings sputter 
as they roast before the coals and tell the tale of which loves the best ; to the 
roysterers of All-halloween ducking their heads in water tubs for the red re- 
treating sphere ; to friends and neighbors on a winter night who, having 
trudged across the snowy fields, are regaled with mellow fruit and mellower 
cider; to all the light-limbed gatherers on autumn days who climb among the 
boughs or roll the bright heaps together in the orchard corners. 

There are few scenes pleasanter to the eye of those that from' childhood 
have known the apple-tree in garden and field and about the back door than 
those of the apple gathering. The branches, that all the summer have hung 
a little more heavily day by day, have long been hiding under their dropping 
weight the far-stretching orchard aisles whose arched roofs and turfed floors 
have seemed fit for fairy dancing-halls ; now men and boys have climbed 
among them with baskets and ladders, or are emptying their loads by the piles 
of barrels, this load yellow as the apples of the Hesperides, that red as rubies 
are, and all as fragrant as the first apple that ever tempted Eve. The girls 
and the women of the family are usually as busy as the men are, too; and 
even the horses of the waiting teams arch their necks and turn their wistful 
eyes, appreciative of the sweet morsels that they love so well. In all the 
time of the harvest no other work is to be done, no men can be hired to lay 
stone or haul gravel or cart wood; the "appling, " before the frost can work 
its mischief, or the high winds toss and hurt the fruit, has tasked the ener- 
gies of a whole neighborhood. 

How picturesque, then, are the cider mills with their enormous heaps of 
fruit about them ! how far and how deliciously on every hand you can scent 
the air they load with their aroma as you ride along, as if the virtue of golden 
pippin, and of the gillyflowers, the richness of whose deep red skin stains the 
snowiness of the black-seeded white flesh with a crimson tinge of snow-apple, 
and of nonesuch, had all melted into the atmosphere, and become a part of 



176 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

it ! And although the sky be full of the promise of winter, and although the 
heap of fruit be chill to the touch, one feels, in receiving the rich odor, in 
looking at the rich colors of the glittering heaps on the ground, something of 
the warmth and cheer of which they will presently be a part ; of red-embered 
fires, and beaming faces round them that they will help illuminate — fires no 
more red and shining than the apples that toast before them ; of " turn-overs, " 
and of "pan-dowdies," and of "apple-jack" ; and one feels that the apple har- 
vest is valued none too much, and that, from the blossoms of May to the "dried- 
apple sauce" of March, the apple tree is the special blessing of its owners and 
growers, all that the date is to the Arab, a rough-coated, warm-hearted friend, 
a vegetable guardian angel of hearth and home and happiness. 



Woman in Agriculture. 

But whether she has an orchard or not, every woman who has ten feet 
of earth about her door thinks herself an object of blame if she has not at 
least a rose-bush, a cluster of coleus, and a honey-suckle in it; and she may 
be seen in spring and fall and in the heats of summer watering and pruning 
and digging as she would think herself abominably used if it were expected 
of her now-a-days in relation to any matter pertaining to the economies, such 
as hoeing the corn or digging the potatoes, or doing anything of the sort, let 
it be lighter or heavier work, whose end is not purely aesthetic. She has no 
idea of returning to the tasks of her savage ancestress ; she has sublimated 
and idealized those tasks. But unconsciously though she makes the offering, 
yet nevertheless every blossom that blows under her hands is a tribute to that 
ancestress, an offering on her altar, a memorial service to her who first dis- 
covered and turned to her advantage the warmth and fertility and creative 
power of the mother earth. 



Among the Lake Dwellings. 

"The ruins of so-called lake dwellings," says a graphic address of Mr. 
Lyman before an agricultural society, "covered for long ages with water, have 
revealed the beginnings of such culture in Europe. Among the charred piles 
which once supported wooden cabins built in a lake have been found bones of 
oxen, dogs, and goats, and beside them heaps of wheat and barley. No writ- 
ing, monument, or tradition remains to tell us who were these primitive til- 
lers of the soil who thus sought safety from enemies amid the waters. By 
their implements, fished up in quantities from the bottom, we know that some 
of them still maintained the good old fashion of stone tools, while others, more 



Poor Rj chard, 1 7 33 



AN 

Almanack 

For the Year of Chiift 
Being the Firit after LEAP YEAR: 

jlndmafus Jtnce tic Citation, Y ears 

By the -Account of the Eaftem_£re«£? 72^ 

By tKe Latin. Church, when Q cut f ^932. 

By the Computation of WW. 5T42. 

By tKe 'Roman CKrortology f 65z 

By the Jfcfc//£ Rakliie* /494. 

Wherein, is cofiUtneci 
The Lunatiows.. Eclfpfes 7 Judgment of 

tfu Weather, Spring Tides, P/anefr MotioiK & 
Tnut-ual A('p<rfo> Sinvand Moon's "Riling And Set- 
trng. Length o6Day5, Time of High- Water,. 

FdT-71» Court?, and otfcWflbk D,3>S 

Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees 
and a. Mendun of F»Ve Hours W«ft frana L*yyhn ) 
fcutrnay without fenftble Erro? fenns aUtfre Ad- 
jacent FUces, even fram m Ntu>fouMall3nft to Saettb- 

CavoliitAj ^ ^ 

3TR1CHJRD SAUNDERS, PhU oiru 

PHILADELPHIA^ _ M _ 
PrinUd and fold by 5. JKJNJCZm #0* N^ 
Flilrfbig.tMfc* near the Martet, 

''- - — - 



178 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

ambitious, were able to cast implements of bronze — another lesson from mother 
earth, who yielded her copper and tin for the melting-pot. They were bar- 
barians, with the manners of barbarians ; and it is safe to infer that women 
did all the field-work, and held undisputed possession of what the French 
call 'the sacred right to labor.' The man goes into the Swiss forest intent, 
with flint-headed arrow, to slay a red deer; the woman must till the field, and 
be back in good season with a bundle of firewood to boil the venison, which 
her lord may eat while she dresses the hide with a stone scraper. To her the 
duty of gathering, quartering, and drying the wild apples for winter use ; 
their fragments have been found — prototypes of apple-sauce. She must 
bring the grain in from the small clearings, and store it safely in the lake- 
dwelling, under the eye of its master, who sits lazily chipping a pebble, 
whereof he will fashion, by some weeks of labor, a spear-head. That woman 
wrought better than she knew. While, perchance, her thoughts were only on 
her finery — her bronze bracelets and hair-pins — she was founding an ever- 
glorious reputation as the Discoverer of Agriculture. It passes my compre- 
hension that writers on woman's rights and woman's superiority have not 
earlier hit on this capital fact — woman was the discoverer of agriculture. The 
classic nations recognized it. Ceres of the Romans, Demeter of the Greeks, 
was not a god, but a goddess, who taught the uses of corn. On the eve of 
her festival the women drove out of the temple men and dogs, shut the doors, 
and had a good time by themselves. Alas, genius lives on unconscious of 
itself ! Women planted and garnered all through the last of the stone period 
and the beginning of that of bronze unconscious that her praises would be 
sung ages afterward by the Norfolk County Agricultural Society. When she 
quartered and dried those sour wild apples, did she dream of pomological 
clubs? Did she suppose it would ever be possible to propagate three hundred 
varieties of pears ? There is encouragement to be drawn from such late 
recognition of genius. ' ' 

Perhaps it was "genius" in this early woman, perhaps it was the instinct- 
ive turning to the creative earth, perhaps it had nothing to do with the cir- 
cumstance that the savage lord and master found the wild exhilaration of 
the hunt something vastly more pleasant than bending with the rude imple- 
ments of the time over the furrow, and fighting the wild boar infinitely gayer 
work than fighting weeds. Whatever may have been the power that impelled 
her to the work, it is interesting to remember that gardening was woman's 
work ever since Eve plucked the roses of Eden, and that her descendants, over 
their little trellises and rockeries, their vases, and window boxes, are only 
following out what hundreds of generations may have now trained into a 
purely feminine instinct. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 179 

A Picturesque Sight. 

Nor could there be a pleasanter illustration of feminine instinct than the 
delight of making something grow where nothing grew before, the delight of 
creation, and of producing and increasing beauty to gladden the eyes of the 
world. It is, perhaps, to be doubted, if flower-gardening were a plebeian occu- 
pation, whether feminine instinct would turn to it quite so willingly, al- 
though we fancy that even in that case there would be surreptitious little 
boxes of mignonette and violets hidden away in corners for private, if vulgar, 
enjoyment. But since even duchesses handle now and then a garden rake and 
play the pastoral, no woman of lesser degree, or of any republican degree, 
feels that her dignity suffers any derogation from the use of her little hoe and 
sprinkler. She knows that she not only adds beauty to the world, but is a 
picturesque object in the landscape while doing it, not only in the tender 
spring and summer, but at a time when the out-door world is cheerless, and 
needs such an enlivening object as her bright colors and busy movements 
make her. Moreover, if she herself is not conscious of it, others are con- 
scious that the work is a refining one, that rude movements are impossible 
where such delicate objects are concerned, and that ungracious thoughts can- 
not have wide range in the mind of her who watches the slow, sweet progress 
of the bud becoming a flower, and takes heed to feed and nurture it some- 
thing as a mother cares for a child, while she sees loveliness growing under 
her hand as it grows under the hand of painter or carver. Meanwhile the 
bountiful old earth remembers well those who take pleasure in occupying 
themselves with her; and for all the toil in the damps of spring, the heats of 
summer, or the chills of autumn, she gives a robustness and rosiness that 
make the beauty of the flowers not the only beauty evoked from her proc- 
esses. She repays the effort expended on her by a fine familiarity with her 
ways, which makes the fair gardener seem to be more a thing of nature than 
of art herself ; and every once in a while she causes one to think that, but for 
women, those flowers which are merely objects of beauty and not utility 
might perish out of the world. In his charming "Out-door Papers" Colonel 
Higginson describes a piece of statuary, a fountain in a garden, whose fine 
fall wrapped three marble maidens in a veil of spray, and in winter sheathed 
them about with glittering, many-rainbowed ice. Such a sculpture in a gar- 
den is but a monument to those women who were possibly, it seems, the first 
gardeners ages ago, and who are the tutelary genii of all flower gardeners 
now. ' 

Perhaps Mrs. Royal's garden was a trifle disappointing, but such as it 
was, would you like to hear about it ? 




(l8o) WHO OWNS AN APPLE TREE AND DOES NOT WISH FOR TWO 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 1S1 

Mrs. Royal's Garden. 

There are few greater luxuries in life than the possession of a garden, a 
fine old kitchen-garden, where from long care the soil has a tropical rich- 
ness; where there are corners for balm and"yarbs" and spicy shrubs; where 
rows of currant bushes shut you off from rows of tomatoes; where there are 
long arbors of case-knife beans ; where melons surprise you among thickets 
of corn, and pumpkins and squashes climb over the stone wall and hang their 
yellow wealth on the other side ; where [the carrot shreds her lovely tresses, 
the red-veined beet leaves make a patch of color, the cabbages are like apoth- 
eosized green roses; where shady grass-plots are left about apple-trees 
and nut trees, about some one pear-tree famous the country round, some rosy 
peach or bearer of translucent plums; where industry and idleness, shadow 
and sunshine, pleasure and thrift, are blended in one charming composition ; a 
place sacred to long sunny mornings, to the working off of megrims; where 
one works and pretends to play, where one plays and pretends to work ; where 
one dreams of the subtile chemistry by which the seed he buries, with the 
atoms of earth and ordure, dew and sunshine, around it, is metamorphosed 
till ashes become gold, eking out a narrow income, and wakes to find that, on 
the other hand, it was gold he buried and only ashes that remain, leaving him 
profoundly convinced that gold is -not one of the original metals, since he 
himself has reduced it to its constituent elements and gases — a place, in fact, 
which one discovers, after infinite loss and disappointment, is the sole com- 
mon ground of two great classes of society, and can belong only to the mil- 
lionaire or to the day-laborer. 

We were neither millionaires nor day-laborers, but when we moved to 
Craigie we were resolved to have a garden — "a real old-fashioned kitchen- 
garden, Royal," said I. 

"It takes years to make a real old-fashioned garden," was the reply. 

"No; only money. There are half a dozen apple-trees for a nucleus al- 
ready, and we only need to set out the largest raspberry bushes and quinces 
that can bear transplanting. No, it will only take money." 

"But we haven't a great deal of money." 

"We don't need a great deal — just enough to buy our top-dressing, and 
have the earth spaded and planted, and then the things will come up of them- 
selves, you know — we can't effect that. Major Bayley will be delighted to 
give us some dwarf pears, and we can buy a few standard roses" 

"Roses in a kitchen-garden?" 

"Oh, yes; it is charming to come upon some great flower when you are 
hunting for a last pod of peas — like unexpected wealth, you know. And we 



l82 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



jWSfE^ 




THE HARVEST OF THE GRAIN FIELD. 



shall get a mine of happiness out of it, and save the cost of all our vegetables, 
and have some to give away, and perhaps — yes, very probably — add a surplus 
to our income. Oh, I wouldn't be without a kitchen-garden on any account. 
I'd rather be without a drawing-room. There was no use in moving down to 
Craigie if we were not to have a kitchen-garden. " 

All which meant that Mr. Royal was opposing me enough to make me 
think I was having my own way, when in reality he was having his, and in- 
tended a kitchen-garden from the start. 

"Well," he said, "if you really will have the garden — I warn you it 

will be a great deal of trouble" 

"Oh, no matter about the trouble," said I. 

"Well, then, the first thing to do is to have that spot ploughed — should 
have been done last fall, and the sod turned up to rot." 

We had decided upon the precise place at last — on the south side of the 
apple-trees, having quarreled over every inch of ground, sowed it with salt 
and watered it with tears, so to say, in our endeavor to locate the garden with 
reference to sunshine, security, privacy, and pleasure, till it became as mem- 
orable to us as the landmarks where every spring the old Germans used to 
take their children and box their ears solemnly all round that they might 
never forget the locality. 

"The first thing to do," repeated Royal, "is to have the ground ploughed. 
It's virgin soil. I don't believe the share has ever turned a sod of it since the 
days of the primeval forest " 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 183 

Which conjecture was a sound one, as we discovered next day when 
Neighbor Weldon's broken ploughshare assured us that our garden-plot was 
founded on a rock. "Well," I overheard Royal saying to the men, "my wife 
has set her heart on a garden, and she shall not be disappointed. We'll have 
to blast. " And so for a day or two the click of drills and hammers resounded, 
and then came a shock as if heaven and earth were coming together, and they 
had blasted indeed — a premature explosion had broken every window on that 
end of the house, and cracked the parlor mirror from side to side. 

Of course at the breaking of the mirror grandma cried out in horror, and 
felt that she had lost or was about to lose every friend in the world, and I 
think it weighed more heavily on her mind than Royal's broken arm or the 
hired man's burned face. But his arm being set again, Royal's blood was 
up; fate itself now was not going to balk him of that garden; if he couldn't 
see to it, I must ; and we went on blasting, having a great ox-team to haul 
out the broken rock, till we had taken out ninety tons of granite, and it wasn't 
a ledge either, going into central earth, but just some drift and huge boul- 
ders. "We had better have turned it into a quarry," growled Royal. "We 
might have made our fortune at that." 

"You can't quarry drift and boulders; they give out presently. And if 
you could, it would have been a fine thing, a quarry, with hammering and 
yelling and oxen and derricks under our eyes forever. Mr. Weldon will buy 
the rock of you, though; he wants it for his new cellars." 

"He can't have a pebble of it!" cried Royal. "I shall want it for cellars 
of my own, hen-houses and rockeries and things." 

1 ' Ninety tons of rocks ! Nonsense ! He will pay you twenty dollars for it. " 

"What's twenty dollars, if I have to buy stone myself?" 

"But there's plenty where that came from." 

"No, there isn't. I've taken out the last splinter; there were only some 
enormous fragments, left by the glacier, perhaps, that scratched those cliffs 
out there — no permanent wealth of stone. ' ' 

"But" 

"Now don't let us discuss that, Prim. He can't have it." 

My Christian name of Primrose had become a sort of measurer of moods, 
for when Royal was vexed he always said "Prim," and when he was pleased 
he always called me "Rose." 

But the holes left by that ninety tons of rock were something appalling. 
"It's the greatest undertaking that ever I undertook," said Royal. "We've 
not only to make the garden, but really to make the earth first." 

"But when it's done it is done," said I. "The first cost is all/' 

"That's so," he answered me. "The first cost is all." 



i8 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

So we hauled the earth from a distant pasture, where it was black as a 
prairie with richness. They gave us the earth and a welcome, but it cost a 
dollar a load to haul it, and we had two hundred loads. 

"Well, now, Rose," said Royal, as we walked down the paths that had 
been staked out about the beds, "we have really begun the garden." 

"And how lovely it will be to sit on this stone wall and look out across 
the sea under the shadow of this gnarled old russet tree, hidden from sight 
by the corn, and all that, growing by day and by night, and bringing us in 
money for hardly turning our hands over!" 

"Yes," said Royal, "I must say I anticipate a great deal of enjoyment in 
seeing these things come forward." 

' Let alone all that about benefactors in making two blades of grass grow 
where one grew before. Oh, Royal, here's a bean come up!" 

"By George! so it is." And we stood over that absurd little cotyledon 
with our hands clasped, in an ecstasy, as if it were the first thing that had 
ever come out of the earth since creation. 

"Oh, I always was so fond of beans!" I cried. "Don't you remember 
Alphonse Karr's chapter about the delights he could trace to the fact that the 
beans were in blossom ? Oh, I am so glad ! The armies of the Crimea got 
roast beef and ice-cream and marmalade from their beans by skillful manipu- 
lation. Nobody needs to starve that has beans ; and you know Pythagoras 
deified the bean, Royal, and" 

"Yes, I know, Rose," said Royal, laughing at me. "But it's a pity 
there isn't a pea, too. I suppose the birds ate up the radish seeds, but I 
thought perhaps we should have some early cucumbers. Don't you suppose 
that the potatoes mean to come up at all?" 

Perhaps the spell of wet weather had spoiled the planting; perhaps the 

corn and peas hadn't been soaked long enough; perhaps ■ But there, what 

use is it? They didn't come up, and we planted them over again. Then 
when the corn did sprout we couldn't quite make out whether it was grass or 
corn, and had to let weeds and all grow together for a while before we dared 
to hoe; and the peas were so late that when they came straggling along, the 
hot weather shriveled them to nothing. But the beans — the beans were sim- 
ply splendid. The cabbage plants, too, were quite thriving, and the tomatoes 
were a wilderness of green leaves and strong odors ; the squash vines were 
perfectly rampant, and the potatoes really began to hill up. I was sorry about 
the peas; there was a white mould all over them like a bloom — and they 
never had any other bloom to speak of — while Royal, who had dreams of a 
vineyard, was entirely disgusted with the fifty dollars' worth of grape-vines 
and pear-trees he had set out, the leaves on the latter curling up in a curious 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



i85 




MAKING GROW WHERE NOTHING GREW BEFORE. 



fashion, but on the former disappearing- altogether. "By George! Prim," he 
exclaimed at last, "it's those confounded hens of yours!" 

Now contumelious mention of the hens, I must confess it, touched a sore 
spot. They were the prettiest creatures that ever stepped as if the earth 
were not fit to tread on : black just dusted with white, and with the loveliest 
great cropple-crown of feathers hanging- all over their eyes. To be sure, I 
had had them now six months, and they had never laid an egg, nor shown 
any disposition to hatch a chicken, and had eaten whole bags of grain; but 
they were of grand family, and everybody knows that Black Polands seldom 
lay, and never set; it's enough to be allowed to look at them. These in par- 
ticular seemed the very fairest of fowl ; and the rooster, with his long plumes 
that sometimes tipped him backward, his dainty ways, and delicate outlines, 
never reminded me of anything but Oberon. I admit that I should have 
liked to see some little Poland chickens, but perhaps I shouldn't have thought 
half as much of those hens if they had condescended to any such common- 
place thing as eggs. "'Oh!" I cried, "oh, my hens!" 



186 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"Yes," said he, "your hens. If those hens were worth a rap," cried 
Royal, severely, "do you suppose they'd leave these things on the vines?" 
and he held up a branch of the potatoes thick with great brown slimy crea- 
tures. 

"I suppose that's what's destroying the pear-trees, too," I exclaimed, 
breaking off a twig. 

"It's just inattention, " he cried. "If there'd been any oversight of 
things at all, this would have been nipped in the bud." 

"In the bug, you mean. But whose inattention is this?" and I tossed 
him the twig of the pear-tree, covered with just as nasty a brown slug. "I 
don't suppose I'm to climb trees." 

"You mean to infer it is mine?" he exclaimed. "I, who have to be in 
town all day long in order to get enough to keep up this intolerable expense 
and luxury, coming home tired out with my day's work, must hurry out here, 
and toil like a swinking laborer!" 

"Well, if you think I've nothing to do but to spend my life picking bugs 
off plants, you — How — how utterly outrageous! Oh, I never imagined you'd 
expect anything of the sort. When you married me, you said the winds of 

heaven I never thought — I wouldn't have believed" and I burst into 

tears, and flounced out of the garden and into the house, and hid myself in 
my sewing-room, and didn't speak to Royal all night, and he went off to town 
in the morning without his breakfast. 

Of course the first thing I did after that was to send for a quantity of 
paris green, and go to the district school and beg a half -holiday for all the 
small boys, that they might be turned into my garden, armed with tin pans, 
for a crusade on the beetles. They trod down every other row of the pota- 
toes, to be sure, but they didn't leave a beetle on the place, nor a penny m my 
purse. Yet, for fear of accident, I sifted the paris green over the vines thor- 
oughly, and then procured ashes from the house and paid my respects to the 
pear-tree slugs. A strong wind was blowing at the time ; and although I 
destroyed the slugs, I destroyed my gown as well, the ashes clinging ineradi- 
cably to the fibre. And as the stupid servant had brought them from the 
range, a hot cinder blew into my eye and fastened itself, and when Royal 
came home at last he found the house in confusion, with the doctor just com- 
ing, and the people running this way and that, and my eyes, already inflamed 
with a night's crying, in a condition with that cinder before which the eyes 
of Leah would have had to pale ineffectual fires. Of course it was all his 
fault, and he acknowledged it like a man, and we had a reconciliation that 
made it seem as if we had just become engaged, and had never been married 
at all. 






i88 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"Well, Rose," said Royal, "if a reconciliation is like marriage, a quarrel 
is like divorce, and the fewer we have the better." 

4 * Then you mustn't call me names," said I. 

"I never called you names, Prim," said he. 

"Oh, how can you say so?" I cried. And I suppose we should straight- 
way have plunged into another skirmish but for the little servant, who ran in 
and begged me to go out to the garden. 

"Garden be" began Royal. But I tied a handkerchief over my aching 

eye, and we went ; and there lay my six hens and their lovely little lord and 
master, on their backs, with their drooping claws in the air. They had eaten 
the paris green, and had been exterminated. 

I must say that I shed tears over their little corpses, but not very bitter 
ones, as they dried themselves on the discovery that the golden pippins were 
ripe — a cream-colored apple with black seeds and delicious flesh and flavor. 
What lovely desserts were here! what crates to send away to relatives with 
watering mouths, what baskets to friends in town ! What was there so choice 
as a smooth yellow apple, warm with sunshine? Who blamed Eve? Why 
couldn't we have an apple-bee, and invite everybody to the picking? We 
would. The next morning we found that the bee had been held over night 
without invitations. Those dreadful little boys of the district school had not 
been in the garden for nothing ; they, too, had learned that the pippins were 
ripe, and there was not an apple left on the tree. 

"We will have to get a dog, " said Royal. 

We got a dog. When that dog had scratched up the celery trenches for 
the purpose of burying his bones there, had rolled in the asparagus beds, and 
the carrots, and over the late-coming cucumber vines till they were worthless ; 
had chased the calf into the corn just as it was ripening, till not one ear was 
left standing on another; had pulled down a dozen sheep, and brought home 
as many dead young turkeys from the neighbors', for all of which we had to 
pay; had sensibly added to the butcher's bill; had bayed the moon till sleep 
forsook the place ; had frightened the baby into fits, and had given the rest 
of us a hydrophobic horror — we began to think him as doubtful an experi- 
ment as the garden. He was fastened upon us, but celery, asparagus, car- 
rots, and corn had fled. However, that corn, as we began to look forward to 
it, had developed a hideous fungus, so that nearly every ear was as big as ten, 
and that was to be subtracted from Bruno's debtor account. "Well," I said, 
"at any rate there are going to be millions of tomatoes; they are just redden- 
ing, and we shall have a salad of them by day after to-morrow. And there 
will be quantities for chowchow besides ; and then, with ginger and lemon, 
you know, they make the most luscious Oriental sweetmeat. And you really 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 189 

can't tell a preserved melon from citron; so Bruno and the calf did some good 
in trampling down the corn, for it has let the sun in on the melons. ' 

"What melons?" said Royal. 

"Why, the water-melons, and nutmegs, and" 

"Do you see any there ?" he asked. 

Upon my word, not one. The district school had levied on that melon 
patch, and we might have perished with thirst, for all the imps had cared. 

"I don't care"' I exclaimed, after the first of the dismay. "I hate mel- 
ons, anyway ; they always taste like a raw squash, and they are full of cholera 
morbus; while a tomato" 

Alas! what was that clucking under the tomato plants ? I bent to see the 
cause, and beheld the whole harem of Neighbor Weldon's black Cochin fowl 
comfortably disposed there, and not a tomato of them all that those bills of 
theirs had not broken and emptied. It was no use to shoo those hens out of 
the garden and beyond the farthest bounds of Craigie , they seemed to de- 
scend out of the air or come up out of the ground ; and when you assured 
yourself that they were utterly routed, there they were again pecking away 
at the tomatoes, and there they stayed as long as a single love-apple did, en- 
joying the first-fruits of the garden, and leaving neither sweetmeats nor chow- 
chow to us for second-fruits. 

I pledge you my word that by this time Mr. Royal had hedged, pretend- 
ing that the garden was none of his, but a little indulgence allowed me, and 
that he took a magnanimous sort of interest in it for my sake, and gave him- 
self some mild merriment over it at my expense. Of course at that I was put 
to my trumps, and determined to have something from that garden. We had 
the beans, to be sure ; we had them every day, and out of the necessity of my 
enthusiasms I was compelled nearly to live upon them. They certainly were 
the nicest beans I ever tasted. But the only other thing left me now on which 
there was any possibility to make or keep a reputation for my garden was a 
certain squash that had early manifested an intention of distinguishing itself. 
There was to be a county fair and agricultural display, and if I could but take 
the prize for my squash, would Royal, would any one, dare laugh at my gar- 
den? Now it is not universally known that near the stem of every squash is 
a little proboscis which it puts down and roots round within the earth, and 
through which it sucks up further nourishment than that given by the roots. 
"Further nourishment it shall have," said I. And I secretly brought a great 
flat pan of milk even.' day, and set it down beneath the vine, lifting the 
stem carefully, and plunging that little proboscis into the contents, and you 
would have laughed to see it suck up the whole of that milk, like a live crea- 
ture, and fairly grow beneath your eyes. How it did grow! How it 



190 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 




stretched its great yellow sides as it lay warm in the sun, like a child waking" 
from sleep! I began to get fond of it, and to experience a certain gratitude 
toward it as the redeemer of the garden's good name. What a monster it was 
becoming! I trembled for a time lest it might be stolen over night, but at 
length the danger was past — it was too heavy for mortal thief. Forty pounds, 
fifty pounds, sixty pounds: it grew as those huge balls grow that boys roll 
before them in the snow till they are higher than their own heads. I don't 
dare to say it was a hundred pounds, or two hundred pounds, or a ton — it 
never was weighed. I used to make Royal come out and walk round it ad- 
miringly with me. ' ' By George ! " he used to say, ' ' there ' s something uncanny 
about it. I'm afraid of it. We'll have to rig a derrick to get it to the fair!" 
The derrick was a couple of Irishmen ; and as the great thing rose in their 
arms, big as the moon in August through the mist, a clumsy foot contrived to 
slip, and over went Irishmen, squash, and all, in an indistinguishable mass 
of slush and pulp, and I sat down and cried. 

It was the end of the garden. The beans had all been stacked and dried 
and threshed; a dozen squashes, misshapen and warty, as if one needed prac- 
tice in growing them, and the thimbleful of potatoes, had been put into the 
cellar. Everything was dry and sere and rustling ; presently there came a 
black frost as if a fire had run along the ground. I went out and pottered 
about the forsaken beds now and then ; but it was generally thought in the 
family that the subject of the garden was one best to avoid in conversation 
with me ; and at last the snow came and covered all that battle-ground with 
a robe of peace, and we forgot about the thing. 

One day a robin twittered under the window ; a bit of sunshine lay so 
warm there that I saw a snow-drop piercing the moist ground with his shin- 
ing little helmet; I thought I saw a blue-bird's wing; certainly the buds were 






STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 191 

swelling; it was time to think of the garden. There had been a great snow- 
fall, and it had suddenly melted under a few strong suns, in pools and streams 
of water, and now there came a week's steady down-pour of rain, enough to 
soak through to the nadir. "I'm sure it's lucky they have tanka boats in 
China, Royal," said I, waking up one morning and hearing the steady down- 
pour still. "The whole population will take refuge in them if this lasts much 
longer. It will have flooded Symmes' Hole by this time and washed it out, 
so that we may expect to see great things floating down from the pole this 
summer. There can't be any drought this year with the ground so soaked. 
What do you say about the garden, Royal?" 

"What do you say?" said Royal. "I don't know. It hardly seems worth 
while." 

"Worth while?" 

"Well, let us cast it up." 

' ' Cast up the garden ? ' ' 

"I mean the cost of it, of course. What are you so irritable about? Let 
me see — debit : a broken ploughshare, drilling, blasting powder, hire of men, 
teams, and oxen, the doctor's bill for my broken arm, the glazier's bill for 
the windows, a new mirror, the price of two hundred loads of muck, wages of 
a man for ninety days, seeds, paris green, district school boys, price of pota- 
toes destroyed, of your dress ruined by ashes, apples stolen, melons stolen, of 
the dog, of all the mischief that he did, of six hens and the cock poisoned, 
of" 

"Oh, my goodness! As if there were no credit to the garden side!' 

"Yes; I was coming to that eventually: one bushel of potatoes, a dozen 
small squashes, one mess of tomatoes, ninety messes of beans." 

"And a world of pleasure!" I cried. 

"Well, you may call it so, Prim. I can find more pleasure for the same 
money in some other way. Every one of those beans cost more than if it 
had been raised in a hothouse. " 

"Well, I declare'" 

"Do you call it pleasure to have the sharp edge of a hundred-weight of 
stone snap your bones like a cleaver, as my arm" 

"You have plenty to say about your arm, but I don't hear a word about 
my eye." 

"Oh" 

"I know exactly what you were going to say, Royal. You were going to 
say, 'Hang my eye!' " But just then a hand was clapped over my mouth. 

"Not another word," said Royal, "or we shall quarrel again, and we 
haven't quarreled since that wretched garden has been covered up; and I 



192 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

wouldn't quarrel with you to-day for the Garden of Eden! Don't you know 
what day it is, Rose?" 

And in consideration of its being the anniversary of something — we had 
so many anniversaries, from the day when we first made mouths at each other 
as children to the day when we first made love to each other as grown people! 
— I was about to express my forgiveness, when there came the strangest shock 
and shatter and crash you ever knew, so that the bed rocked, and the brackets 
pitched, and my very eyes shook in their sockets. And as at the same instant 
there rose a terrible yelping from Bruno, I sprang to the window. "Oh, 
Royal! Royal!" I cried, "what has happened to the garden?" 

He sprang to my side, and looked over to the cliff. There wasn't any 
garden there. A tremendous land-slide, whether caused by the rains or by 
an earthquake shock, had scooped it out as neatly as one cuts with a knife, 
and the great sheet of earth and boulders, with the young plum-trees and the 
dwarf pears and the old apples, was sweeping down, and taking Bruno with 
it, and burying itself in the sea with a gigantic plunge and hiss and roar, 
leaving only an unfathomable bed of dry sand in the hollow behind it. "So 
that settles it," said I. "Nature takes your side. The stars in their courses 
fight against Sisera. What a pity," I cried, in a sudden fury, "that there 
wasn't a land-slide in the Garden of Eden that would have carried Eve and 
her apple over the edge, and left the world alone to Adam and ycu men!" 

"There was," said Royal; "and the apple of discord has taken root here. 
Yes, that settles it," said Royal, complacently. "And now we'll have to buy 
our vegetables." 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 193 



CHAPTER EIGHTH. 



The House in the Country. 

Not a mouse 
Shall disturb this hallowed house. 

— Shakespeare. 

I can tell you why a snail has a house. Why? Why, to put's head in. 

— Shakespeare. 

Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to tes- 
tify it, — Shakespeare. 

The stately homes of England 

How beautiful they stand, 

Amid their tall ancestral trees, 

O'er all the pleasant land! 

— Felicia D. Hemans. 

And hie him home at evening's close 
To sweet repast and calm repose. 

— Thomas Gray. 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree. 

— Coleridge. 

I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled 

Above the green elms that a cottage was near, 
And I said, "If there's peace to be found in the world 

The heart that was humble might hope for it here." 

— Moore. 

This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself. 

— Shakespeare. 

The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against 
injury and violence as for his repose. — Sir Edward Coke. 



Necessary Foresights. 



One approaches the house through the garden, and having made sure of a 
pleasaunce there, it is tolerably certain that the house is going to be a sort of 
a pleasaunce, too. In the first place it has been oriented in the right way, 



i94 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

squared to the southeast, so that the sun comes into every room in it at least 
once a day, and in some rooms lies all day long Besides being supplied with this 
wealth of sun, it has been remembered that another requisite of health, and so of 
happiness, is pure water, and care has been taken that the well, if there is no 
high-spring to pipe into the house, is more than a hundred feet from any drain, 
and so a multitude of poisonous microbes has been kept at a distance. And when 
everything else to give comfort in the house has been foreseen, one thing more 
will be thought of, and almost before the house is built its owners shall make 
sure of a piazza. 

The Piazza. 

For both country and seaside life in America during the summer season, 
and even for a part of the winter, has become largely an affair of the piazza, or, 
as it is more prettily styled throughout the South and Southwest, of the gallery — 
has become a sort of out-door existence, in which there is all heaven to breathe 
and all heaven's light to see by. 

It is no longer the little skimped piazza of old times with which people 
now content themselves, where one could scarcely stretch a sea-chair without 
dangling one's feet over the edge of the place, that hardly served to shade a 
seat anywhere at noonday and was as barren as the plank sidewalk of a muddy 
town, nor is it the imposing Grecian imitation of an ancient portico whose pil- 
lars soar above the ceiling of the second-story rooms, and whose use nobody 
can conjecture, since nobody ever sat upon it. So long as architectural appen- 
dages of the nature of these were the sole piazzas known to the country or the 
country town, people lived inside their dwellings, hot and stuffy as they might 
be; nor could they ever cool off these dwellings as might be done with open 
doors and windows, as they can now when the burning outer air gets its first 
cooling in the lovely out-door room which the modern piazza makes; and they 
consequently lived in a far less wholesome atmosphere than that which it is 
possible to enjoy to-day. 

Not but that homes are healthy without piazzas, which are not an absolute 
necessity of existence, but that generous piazzas are one of the many allevia- 
tions with which this generation surrounds itself, and the benefit of which will be 
shown in the superior health and vigor and bloom of the generations to follow. 

Any piazza, no matter if it is the merest open porch, of no size, compara- 
tively speaking, dresses a house out more or less agreeably, especially if it be 
itself dressed with vines, and not to drape it with vines is not to curtain one's 
windows or ornament one's house in any respect. The vine in its infancy costs 
but a few cents if bought ; costs only a thank- you if begged from a friend ; 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 195 

costs only a walk if brought home from the woods, as the sweet-brier and the 
Virginia creeper can be brought any day ; and this vine, if set out at night-fall 
and well watered for one season will take care of itself forever after, and no 
costly art of the florist can equal the superb effect of the long-continuing scarlet 
bunches of blossom on the luxuriant trumpet flower, or the huge waving pur- 
ple feather of the wistaria that twists and climbs from the piazza to the top of 
the house, and looks back to shake its resplendent plumes in the wind and sun, 

The architects of most of our late houses, so far as those houses have archi- 
tects, are prone to remember all this, and in the place of the three-foot- wide 
Shelf of olden time, they make something that is almost an integral part of the 
house, and only fails to be a room through the want of walls, at once a part of 
the house and a part of all out-doors. These modern piazzas are as large as 
the usual rooms of the house, and seem larger yet through the want of in- 
closure ; they are raised from the ground and kept cool with under-currents of 
air ; they are very lofty, but are intended to be shaded with vines or cheerful 
awnings. Pots of semi-tropical plants adorn them, great rosy oleanders and 
mysterious cacti, that country people always seem to know how to grow, slip 
propagating slip from one neighbor to the other, and in statelier houses, be- 
sides these, there will be the more expensive palms and other frailer exotics 
appearing. Here and there a curtain flaps in the breeze across these airy 
piazzas ; doors open on them, and windows level with the floor ; there are 
canvas and rattan lounges ; there are sea-chairs, telling of foreign travel by 
members of the family ; there are those willow woven articles of superlative 
comfort that are carried about the land swung on the sides of huge wagons ; 
there are wicker stands and baskets, and desks and tables, too, that rain and sun 
are not going to ruin, gay ribbons wrought in which, even when the ribbons 
are only bright tapes and calicoes, make the whole effect still more charming. 
The ease, and one might almost say the abandon, of this pleasant spot are 
equaled not even by the famous " mother's room " of the inside house. 

Here is the cradle brought, that the child may sleep with all the sweet air 
in the world about it, lulled by the birds' song, the bees' hum — for the birds 
will sing in the poorest sidewalk tree, and the bees will hum wherever a leaf 
opens, in the hope that it may have a flower behind it — and here that child, 
well protected, will gather strength twicefold over that given by sleep in com- 
paratively closer quarters. Here, also, is the caller received, the neglige in the 
nature of the place making stately dress a thing to be dispensed with, and allow 
ing the sewing, the writing, the restful lounging, to go on as if all that were proper 
to the hour and spot. Here, moreover, in this out-door room — if the country 
custom of the hearty noon meal is followed with tea and a lighter repast at sun- 
set — is the tea-table often laid, perhaps at first with a little more trouble to the 



196 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

maids, perhaps, in the long run, with not so much, in so far as floors are easier 
to sweep than carpets, and such absence of formality as the habit of the place 
allows making also an absence of steps and work. It is always an elastic tea- 
table, too, in that tea-room where there are so often apt to be other guests than 
breezes and bird songs and flower scents, for one may take one's cup to any 
cozy corner of the place, or one may be waited on without leaving one's ham- 
mock or settee, and there is always the same sort of space for another. 

In fact, the piazza of to-day is a living-room, with all out-doors as a friend; 
one sleeps, works, reads, plays, eats there, and one even dances there, if dance 
one must when the thermometer is up among the high figures. In this lofty 
and deep piazza, where it is only the ever welcome and level beams of sunset 
and sunrise which can call straight across it, there are always spots 01 cool 
shadow where one may lie with a book, undisturbed by flickering sun and 
shadow falling elsewhere in the inclosure; and what a charm is added to the 
book by this atmosphere in which one reads it, an atmosphere that seems a 
very part of the blue of the sky or the green of that forest sending its avant- 
courier in the shadow of the maple or the linden at the corner! And then in 
pure idleness, that necessary fooi for nerves and soul and body, how great is 
the charm of lying there and doing nothing, any more than the leaf that shakes 
outside, and how familiar we become with certain aspects of nature without the 
physical exertion of leaving our own vine and fig-tree, while here again at night 
at last we learn the secrets of the stars themselves! Take it for all in all, it 
seems to us that the large and lofty vine-shaded summer piazza is a blessing 
added to life that has a right to put in rival claims with the telephone, the 
bicycle, the electric light and the ocean cable, more humble perhaps, but giving 
quite as much, if not more, happiness to a larger multitude. 



The Furnishing. 

But the house having been built, whether with piazza and vine, or with- 
out it, with what pleasure and zest do its owners move into it ' There is usu- 
ally a too goodly quantity of half -worn furniture on hand, and one is not in any 
such degree respond i. le for the taste and skill shown in the arrangement of the 
new house, as if eF<iiy thing had been to buy afresh, and there had been the 
opportunity to exercise taste and choice, and fit everything exactly to the place 
for which it is most suitable. If one, for instance, has old carpets, and can 
not afford to dispense with them, they must be ripped and turned and sewed 
over and made to answer in the new rooms and it is they, inanimate rags as 
they are, that settle the question of the color of this or that room, and not you, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 



97 



although you fancy yourselves ever so much the monarch of all you survey. 
There is, however, frequently the chance to show skill and taste in the adapta- 
tion of the old to the new, till it looks like design, and design that nothing 
could have improved upon ; and there are many who derive the greatest satis- 
faction from this exercise of their ingenuity, like that good wife who trusted her 
husband never would be so rich that she should not be obliged to contrive how 
to make both ends meet and be praised for doing it. 

Yet even if one has a purseful of money and no restriction or responsibility 
to another in its expenditure, the task of buying exactly what is best and every- 
thing that is harmonious is by no means an easy one, and in reality requires 
days, if not weeks, of considering and balancing the advantages and disad- 
vantages, and of afterward regretting that the other thing had not been pro- 
cured instead, and finally of being reconciled to the inevitable, and of adding 
some touch to it that shall make it just right after all. 

The first thing to be determined on is to present a thought of solidity and 
comfort to the new-comer opening the hall door, and glad to step beneath the 
shade of the lintel. This can hardly be done if there is 
any patchwork in the appearance of things; if patchwork 
must needs be, it must be of the richest description and 
of such effect as an inlaid floor and warm and handsome 
rugs supply, and the carpets in the rooms opening on 
either hand in very brilliant contrasts, or else simply as- 
cending in the same tone from the main groundwork of 
color that the hall presents. But, to b2 done well, this 
takes costly material, and those who cannot afford that 
would do better to cover their whole ground -floor 
with one and the same inexpensive carpeting, 
which gives an air of harmony to the whole 
of the house in the first place, while each room 




198 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

can be built up into its separate picture with its own upholstery and decoration. 
The inexpensive carpet is always the best, unless One can provide those of the 
costly and indestructible kind, for it can be replaced without ruin, and one is 
not obliged to become weary of it and still to keep it, till it shows the very 
threads on which it was woven and is an eye-sore of the worst sort. Never- 
theless, the carpet should be one of which it will be difficult to weary, and to 
that end it should be as quiet a figure as possible, and in whatever color chosen 
that color should certainly be of pure tint. The pure tint is the only one that 
wears ; the mixed and muddy mongrel tints become in a season utterly 
detestable. 

Most people think that when they have set up a hat rack and an umbrella 
stand in the hall they have done all that could be expected ; and if there is a 
little glass in the hat-rack, that then the effect is sumptuous, and the introduc- 
tion of a chair or sofa seems almost too much luxury. Yet a slight reflection 
would tell them that the appearance of the hall is of as much importance as 
that of any room in the house, and not impossibly a little more so, for it is that 
which first strikes the guest and gives to him the key-note of the house. It 
stands to reason, then, that the hall should be an attractive spot at the first 
glance, giving the guest a desire to penetrate farther, and should never be 
suffered to remain a mere entry and passage-way. Here family portraits should 
be hung, like faces to make each comer welcome, your ancestors, if you have 
their likenesses, welcoming your guests with you, silently depicting to them 
your traits and characteristics, perhaps, and always looking down on your own 
going out and coming in. And here, too, should be hung any pictures particu- 
larly portraying the peculiarity of the ways and tastes of the family; here 
should stand the old clock; here should be a pretty table for chance objects to 
be tossed on, two or three quaint chairs, certainly a mirror, and if there is an 
alcove beneath the stairs, a lounge where an after-dinner rest that shall not be 
a nap may be taken while the summer wind blows through from door to door. 
The hall, in fact, may be made as inviting as any place in all the house, and if 
it is an empty and bare spot, one is very apt to expect the rest of the house to 
be in character. 

It is the drawing-room, or parlor, if you prefer to call it so, in which the 
strongest interest of the furnishing usually centers. We will not say that it 
should be the kitchen, since we are looking rather at the aesthetic and artistic 
side, and will leave to every housewife her own kitchen. And, indeed, the 
drawing-room is, if not of as much importance, at least worthy of separate con- 
sideration, for everybody does not see the kitchen and everybody does see the 
drawing-room ; and the opinion which our friends form of us by our action and 
surroundings is of real consequence in the sum total of our happiness, and the 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 199 

drawing-room depends largely upon ourselves, the kitchen largely upon the 
will of Bridget 



The Parlor. 

Not that we underrate in the least the vital part of the kitchen in the 
household, but we are speaking particularly of appearances. Moreover, since 
every day the drawing-room or parlor invests us with its beauty, or want of 
beauty, and is or is not delightful, it is for our interest and advantage to make 
it so, in order that our daily sights may not increase the disagreeable sensa- 
tions that may be in our lot, but may rather ameliorate them. Little things 
will do this quite as easily as large ones. If the furniture is old, coverings of 
soft-toned chintz, of unbleached cotton cloth, trimmed at brief intervals with 
stripes of plain colored calicoes, will cover it and brighten the effect past belief. 
Little brackets, even home-made, but hung so that the rude manufacturing is 
concealed with pretty fancy-work, simple ornaments of no priceless material, 
but of some perfect outline, a vase, a candle-stick, a Pompeiian lamp, books, 
books in abundance, and flowers — all these, arranged with care and purpose, 
make up the cheerful, lovely aspect of a room, till it is as much a pleasure to go 
into it as if one should see the picture of some charming interior all at once 
take reality upon itself end surround us in still life with all the charm of art. 

The first thing to secure in any room, and especially in any room bearing 
a peculiar home character, is the mantel — no mere slice of marble set on iron 
brackets, but the real chimney-piece going from floor to ceiling, growing out of 
the central part of the house, the protector of the fire upon the hearth. The 
room without a mantel is an atrocity, and has no right to be inhabited ; for the 
mantel always represents the altar of home. To the mantel, then, everything 
in the house should lead ; it should be either the white and culminating point 
of splendor in the room, from which everything retreats, or should be the body 
of shadow to which everything tends. It should be the one chief thing in the 
room which first salutes the eye ; in it centres the great idea of hospitality, for 
there is light and warmth, and should be space ; it stands for host and hostess 
to the guest ; and it stands, too, for infinitely more, since in these days of pub- 
licity it is the one remaining representative of the old Lares and Penates, the 
shrine of the gods of home and the hearth, of domestic privacy and seclusion. 
If this one thing is remembered and attended to, there are scarcely any circum- 
stances under which the room can be unlovely, and the result is tolerably 
certain, if care is taken to avoid a spotty effect hy arranging the furniture and 
the pictures in masses with a view to equivalents in light and shade ; that is, 
if a table leads to a piano, and the piano to a lofty painting behind it, other 




ITSELF DRAPED WITH VINES. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 201 

furniture in another part of the room shall be arranged to balance it with 
corresponding, even if totally different, effect. 

The color of the parlor is a matter deserving more than a passing thought 
or an indulging fancy. There are reasons of complexion to be considered, of 
place, and of suitability ; for because one happens to love a certain color, one 
can not rush into it without reflection. There are few colors so rich and warm 
as the crimsons, for example ; but used in the steamboats and hotels, where 
the average American takes his splendor, they have unfortunately been vul- 
garized out of most houses. As lovely a drawing-room as we ever saw, in 
point of color, was carpeted with gray felt with a deep dull blue bordering ; 
the lounges and chairs were covered with chintz in the most delicate shade of 
robin's egg or gas-light blue, as the wool dealers call it, and the remainder was 
of wicker-work and black lacquer ; the heavy pieces of furniture were in black 
lacquer and gilt ; the curtains were of snowy muslin under lambrequins of the 
chintz ; and the rest of the room was made up of vases, tripods, cups, pictures, 
flowers and sunshine, till it seemed to overflow with harmonious color. But 
perhaps glory can go no farther in furnishing than in a yellow drawing-room ; 
there the splendor of color demanding splendor of material, lustre answers 
lustre, and you have a room where in the gloomiest weather the sun seems to 
be shining, and where the lovely yellow radiance of an October woodland is 
perpetually shed. 

The Library. 

Whatever riddle the drawing-room may read to its decorator, she finds re- 
lief from embarrassment when she comes to the library, for that is a room that 
may be said to furnish itself, since there is little place in a library for any but 
conventional treatment, and the rest remains almost altogether with the wealth 
or with the connoisseurship of the owner. The dining-room, however, is quite 
another thing. 

The Dining-Room. 

It has been far too customary, among those of us who have not unlimited 
bank accounts, to look upon the dining-room as a mere place to go and eat in 
and get out of as soon thereafter as possible. But the dining-room is the one 
place where, morning, noon and night, all the family come together, and are 
obliged to do so, at the same time. Certainly such a place as that should be 
made as attractive as any in the house. Besides, it is the place where the bur- 
den of hospitality is dispensed, and certainly there should be nothing there to 



202 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

suggest to the receivers of that hospitality any poverty or pinching, any fancy 
that the table is differently served in their absence, any vexing hint that the 
family disturbs its equanimity on their account. Thus the dining-room should 
really be as sumptuous a room as it is possible to make it, here the rich color 
and the gilding should be lavished ; here should be displayed all the painted 
china and frosted silver and other objects of kindred luxury in possession, 
something less being paid for the piano-forte that something more may be paid 
for the buffet, and here should be warmth and light and all reminders of com- 
fort and cheer. And if the young mistress of the house once looks after these 
matters with a view to finding the reason for all things, these hints may light 
her on the way to still further discovery of how to make house and home 
delightful. Still, a country house can be made as attractive as it needs to be 
with chintz and wicker-work, leaving all these splendors for the town house 
that is so much more occupied. How precious a house can be to one, whether 
of one's building or of one's grandfather's, in the city or the country, the story 
of the Rosillon House tells us, and here it is. 



The Rosillon House. 

If it had not been his father's house and the house of his father before him 
it would not have been so much a matter of moment to Mr. Rosillon. He re- 
membered the place when he was a boy and when it had seemed no less than 
an ante-room to some heaven of warmth, rich hues and sumptuous material 
atmosphere. And then it had become his father's property, and the family 
had lived there together, and the life was gay and sweet, and he had gone from 
it to his studies in the Polytechnic, coming home on the short vacations, and 
leaving with his course unfinished at his father's death. Crucial time ! When 
his father's estate was settled — he never knew just how it happened, but there 
was little or nothing left for the family, and the house belonged to the executor. 

The executor was the president of the bank where Mr, Rosillon had now 
been the cashier this twenty years and more. It is true he had given the boy 
a place in the bank and had steadily pushed him forward till he was cashier. 
But Mr. Rosillon had always looked upon the old house with the feeling that it 
was his and not another's, and vaguely formed but deep the resolve had always 
been in his will that some day it should be his indeed. 

And now it was to be sold, for the president had stretched out his arms 
like an octopus, grasping this and that possession, and a palace had been slowly 
rising on the hill, inclosed with marble walls and wrought-iron grilles, and the 
old house, still furnished save for the modern additions, the old house that was 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 203 

no longer equal to the president's tastes, was in the hands of a real estate 
broker But it was quite equal to the taste of Mr Rosiilon. and he felt that if he 
failed to obtain possession of it now he never would obtain it. Yet how was it 
possible ? He had not five thousand dollars in the world, and the place was 
worth twenty-five thousand. It had taken nearly all his income to care for his 
sick wife and to keep his boy in college — -his sister Sylvia had the girl kept in 
Europe, They were coming home now, Harold and Angela, and he had been 
looking forward to it with a boyish eagerness, But if it were only up in the 
old Rosiilon house that he was going to receive them i He was not a man that 
indulged in daydreams ; but sometimes as the smoke curled up from the even- 
ing cigar he had pictured the home coming of the children, to him and to their 
mother, in that ancestral house, with a sort of ecstasy. 

He rrad been up there only to-day on an errand for the president, and the 
quaint old tapestry, the rich, blue-green of the worn rugs and curtains, the 
massive mahoganies, the hammered brass, the huge vases as tall as he, all the 
spacious and tarnished splendor of the rooms, even the disjointed old portraits 
that had been banished to the upper passages, had filled him with an indescrib- 
able sort of homesickness, and he had pictured the place with the two big Cop^ 
leys that he had, restored to their places, with the old silver and china that was 
still his and Sylvia's, with the grace that his wife would add to it with his beau- 
tiful Angela roaming through it. with the voice of his boy back from college 
ringing down the halls. And if he could not buy the house now it was useless 
to think of it any more; for the Jerseys — people that seemed to him even more 
of a desecration to have in the house than it had seemed to have the president 
there — would be its owners. Paul Jersey had already made an offer for it, and 
he had a comparative fortune at his command, 

Mr. Rosiilon had spoken to the president about his wishes that day when 
he came down from the old house 

"Why, Td like to help you out, Rosiilon/' said the president. "lam 
always glad to oblige 3^ou. But, upon my word, I don't think it would be a 
friendly act on my part. That house would eat up your salary/' 

"I have been here a long time, Mr. Thursden, and have given the bank 
faithful service/ 1 said Mr, Rosiilon, tentatively, ■' and my best years, Perhaps 
the directors might think an increase of salary "* 

The president opened his eyes and mouth with a strange wrinkling resem- 
blance to a jack-o'-lantern. 

11 Yes/' he said, as soon as he had taken his breath : and losing no time in 
turning the tables. tk The bank has given you employment for a good many 
years, Rosiilon, and has let newer men with newer methods go by. But I don't 
think its interest in you will let it do more than that. ,s 



2o 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

11 I suppose not," said Mr. Rosillon, lowering his handsome head with some 
depression of manner. 44 But there is the house I live in now. With that and 
three or four thousand cash I might arrange a mortgage for the balance that 
would let me take possession."' 

<k Now look here, Rosillon, what's the use ? You know the condition of 
things as well as the next man. You know I'm in enterprises where I need 
myself every penny the bank can spare — enterprises before which this paltry 
affair of an old house has got to step out of the way. Good heavens, man ! 
There's two hundred and fifty thousand cold cash, or as good as, in the safe 
now, and it's only a part of the money I've got to have to make the ' Pipsis- 
sewa 1 go through. And I don't know, I say, that I w T ould help you buy that 
house if I could— Jersey offers me twenty thousand spot cash, for it? but it's 
worth more ; there's a large garden to cut up in lots. It would only saddle you 
with a mortgage worse than a millstone round your neck. No, I advise you as 
a friend not to think of it. It's a mere matter of sentiment. And you can't 
let sentiment have anything to do with business. That's my rule, and you see 
it has met with some success. No, it can't be done, it can't be done," said the 
president affably. " And it isn't for any want of good will: you'll bear me out 
in saying I've always been ready with a helping hand, Rosillon, and I'm doing 
so now in refusing to let you act against your own advantage here." And the 
great man rang the bell and closed the interview. 

It was very evident that Mr. Rosillon acted upon this rule. Mr. Rosillon 
returned to his desk and added his figures, but his thoughts were up in the 
dark, blue-green shadows of the old Rosillon drawing-room. They came back 
with a shock when he saw Paul Jersey pass up the place and go into the presi- 
dent's room, and his breath was hot between his teeth. He felt that he could 
never endure the fact of Paul Jersey in his father's house— the man who had 
married the girl he loved, gained the position for which he had fitted himself, 
kept him out of the land speculation he had seen the first, who, indeed, had got 
the better of him in every relation in life. To be sure, the girl had proved but 
a poor piece of humanity, and the wife he married later had been, for all her 
invalidism, a fireside blessing ; but that did not hinder the main proposition. 
The thought of Jersey's getting that house now was like a cup of gall and worm- 
wood at Mr. Rosillon's lips. It made him shiver with physical repulsion. 
Jersey's wife — the woman who had broken faith with him — queening it at his 
father's fireside ! Jersey's daughters — the bold, apple-cheeked beauties — in the 
place that belonged to his little Angela ! It could not, it should not be ! And 
then he groaned in his helplessness. And Angela might be at home now or 
any day, and he knew as well as he knew his interest table that it had been as 
much the wish of his girl's heart as it had been that of his. And what a van- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 205 

tage it would have given the boy to have such a home as that to which to bring 
his mates — in time he would have helped his father pay for it. And the 
more Mr. Rosillon thought of it the bitterer the moment was. Jersey came 
out of the office, his hands in his pockets, his head a little bent ; he spoke to a 
man near the door as he went out — one of the clerks, and shook his head. Per- 
haps the clerk, who dabbled in outside things, was interested with him in the 
sale of the garden lots, for Mr. Rosillon's ears, preternatural! y quick, heard a 
muttered oath. " And a couple of hundred thousand lying idle in the safe ! " 
the man said. 

A half -moment after he had caught these words, Mr. Rosillon glanced 
about him, with a sudden, half-scared look. Then, as suddenly, great drops 
started out on his forehead. The figures ran into a straight line. Everything 
was black around him. "No, no, no," then his stiff lips were forming to say, 
44 1 am an honest man! " And his fingers were holding the pen like an iron 
vise. 

"What's the matter, Rosillon?" asked Jersey, pausing a moment at his 
window, " come out and have something. The air in this beastly place will 
kill a strong man at sight — sight draft," he said, and went out with half a laugh, 
half a grimace, as Rosillon shook his head. 

Slowly the color crept back into Mr. Rosillon's face, till as he bent it over 
his ledger the purple hue might have been terrifying had any seen it. He 
had a quick notion that every one might hear his heart beat like a drum, far 
away, coming nearer, and bursting with shocks of sound upon the ear. He 
sat there calmly, as if cut out of stone — stone that inclosed a chaotic fire. At 
length, however, he looked around him again, to see if any observed the con- 
vulsion of nature that had been going on. But everything was the same as if 
he had not been absorbed into the atmosphere of another and evil world. He 
looked at the clock, and dipped his pen into the ink, but he did no more work 
that day. He sat on his high stool, his eyes downcast, but his whole being 
alert and sparkling from point to point of the scheme that rose before him. 

It was so simple that presently he laughed. The bonds were unregistered, 
the bags of gold were not impossibly heavy, the packages of bills were of no 
great dimensions Something like a quarter of a million in all. Perfectly safe. 
Then he laughed — he was afraid the president's great deal would not come off. 
And why should it come off ? Were there no equities to hinder it? Was not 
the man rolling in money now? Was it not unrighteous for him to go on add- 
ing millions to his million? And, after all, this little obstruction would be 
merely a rock in the river of his success; the stream would take a new direc- 
tion and go on flowing over its golden sands. 

Mr. Rosillon left his desk as the president came out of the inner office. 



2o6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"May I ask," he said, " if Mr. Jersey made an acceptable offer for the 
place ?" 

11 What place ? Oh, no, he didn't. Come now, Rosillon, get that bee out 
of your bonnet ! I don't know that I would sell it to you if you came cash in 
hand. You're too good a fellow to be ruined by a place that will beggar you 
with its expense. I shouldn't want the best man alive in the bank, with your 
opportunities there, and with such temptations as you would be under if you 
owned that house. I wouldn't trust myself ! " 

Mr. Rosillon's eyes flashed. " Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, " that 
after all the years I have served you " — 

" With unquestionable integrity. Yes. I only mean to say that when one 
of the twelve apostles yielded, no one, no one can be trusted to handle another's 
money who is in great need of it himself. And that is just what I don't want 
to expose you to. " 

" You are very good," said Mr. Rosillon, his eyes on the ground. It smote 
him at that moment that it was the first time he had ever been unable to look 
a man in the face. He threw back his head and gazed squarely at Mr. Thurs- 
den. 

" Why, what ails your eyes ? " said Mr. Thursden. " Those cursed figures 
will be the ruin of all of us yet. You'll have to have some glasses. You're not 
looking at me. You look as if you saw a ghost behind me ! ' 

Rosillon laughed. "No," he said, "it is you that see the ghost. I sup- 
pose my eyes are a little tired. I've been going over the expert account in 
Kane's case — we have the accounts, you know. No; I'm not afraid of the ghost 
you have raised, Mr. Thursden. I see my way to keep up the place if I can 
get it. And what I want is that you should keep the matter open till my sister 
comes here. You know she married a wealthy man, and is a widow — she has had 
my little girl in Europe with her, and she may be here now on any steamer — 
she likes surprises. And I think I can make an arrangement with her that will 
be satisfactory to you, Mr. Thursden." 

11 Well, well, well ; I'll think about it, Rosillon. I'll think about it. But 
I don't advise it, I don't advise it, you know." 

The president pattered away in his big overshoes, and one by one the occu- 
pants followed, and at last Mr. Rosillon was left alone at his desk, still poring 
over the expert accounts. 

The watchman came up and lingered. 

<k What is it, Murphy? " asked Mr. Rosillon, struck suddenly by the cir- 
cumstance that in his calculations he had forgotten Murphy. 

" It's the little gurl, sor, " said Murphy, longing in his sore heart for a word 
of sympathy. " She's down with the fever," 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 207 

"Very ill ?" 

" She wor that bad when I came away that I misdoubt me an' she'll be 
there when I come back, I do. An' me wife's all broke up — ye do be bavin' a 
gurl of your own, Mr. Rosillon " 

' k Well, that's too bad, Murphy. Look here — I'll tell you what I'll do." 
Mr. Rosillon paused, half frightened. If he had forgotten Murphy in his cal- 
culations, here was fate playing into his hands. i4 Yes," he went on, '* I shall 
have to be here, I can't say how late, with these condemned accounts. You go 
home and stay with the child and be back between one and two to-night — well, 
say one. I'll see that it's all right." And he ran his fingers down the column 
before him to escape the thanks that made him feel as if he had picked poor 
Murphy's pocket. 

It might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour, before Mr. 
Rosillon looked up again; he could not have said. The lamps were not yet 
lighted outside. What he had to do must be done now, for the great plate- 
glass windows were always left bare and a gas jet burned all night, for the bet- 
ter inspection of the place by the street patrol. 

What he had to do did not take him long. There were some empty wooden 
boxes in the basement; there were two or three wax candles that had been used 
in sealing documents ; there was a can of kerosene with which the char- woman 
now and then rubbed the woodwork, and then there was some powder that 
awhile ago had been confiscated from one of the messengers who had meant to 
celebrate too lively a holiday. His hand shook> but it answered for the work. 
When Mr. Rosillon had left the bank, turning on the gas and locking the door 
behind him, he knew that two fires were so arranged that they would smoulder 
for some hours, get headway and break out only in the dead middle of the 
night, when sleep was deepest, and just before Murphy's return, and that only 
when so far under way that the work was sure and the explosion was not pre- 
mature, a trail of powder would explode the powder left in the safe and spread 
the flames in new directions, destroying so much that no one would be able to 
say whether the rest had been destroyed or not. The president would not per- 
haps make his deal, but he had made one deal too many when he had robbed 
the Rosillons of their father's estate- this would be hardly more than their 
right and the interest upon it; nothing at all more than he would have made if 
be had his own twenty years ago. Why should he not take his own ? It was 
not that Mr. Rosillon put his thoughts into deliberate words — but all this was 
somehow in his consciousness. 

A parcel of bonds disposed about one's person, some bundles of bank bills 
distributed here and there, some small bags of gold dropped in the capacious 
pockets of a great coat — it was heavy, to be sure ; but wealth always carried 



2o8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

weight, he said to himself rather grimly, and when Mr. Rosillon left the bank 

and went up the street, whether it was for a long or a short time, he was a 

wealthy man. 

* * * * * * * 

As Mr. Rosillon drew near his gate that evening he looked up and saw the 
little house blazing with lights above the tops of the spruces. He knew at once 
what had happened. Angela had come ! And his heart almost leaped from 
his breast. For Angela, this beautiful young girl who was his own flesh and 
blood, and whose sweet existence had been a marvel to him ever since her birth, 
was the very darling of his soul, and the one more than any other for whose 
sake he had found life worth living. 

But in another moment he saw how extremely uncomfortable it would be 
to meet her with the pockets of his great coat sagging in this manner, with the 
bulging of the hard packets of paper about his breast. He opened the door 
with his latch key, as quietly, the thought flashed over him, as if he had been a 
thief, and stepped softly to the little room at the end of the hall which was called 
his den, and divested himself of his new possessions, not staying, however, to 
put them away. When the house was still again he would take care of that. 

Then he stepped into the hall and slammed the front door, and as he did 
so and although his mind was full of Angela, the sight of his father's portrait 
made him think of how well it would look in the old house — there was some- 
thing stern about that face he had not seen in the light that usually fell upon 
it. And then in an instant a silver cry, a glad ringing silver cry resounded, 
and Angela came flying down the stairs. Her boxes had not yet been deliv- 
ered, and she had taken off her traveling dress and wore a white wrapper of 
her mother's, and her hair had fallen, one long curl of fair dead gold, upon her 
shoulder. Her face was pale with excitement, her blue e} r es blazed with joy — 
she seemed to her father in that instant like a spirit of light, an angel of the 
Grail — but he knew it was his little daughter, and he held her close, close, with 
a sense of the fulness of life, and with a more breathless sense of the dearness 
of this perfect being. She was half laughing, she was half crying and fling- 
ing her arms around him again and again, unable at first to speak. " Oh, 
it is so fine to be where you are again, dear, dearest papa!" she cried. 
4 'You are so good, you are so strong, you are such a comfort!" And 
she laid her head on his shoulder and was crying softly, and Mr. Rosillon 
was crying, too. But to be sure his nerves were a little unstrung. And then 
Harold was towering behind her, and there was more outcry and embracing; 
and the mother, pale and thin as a sweet shadow, was coming down with a 
radiant look on her face; and they all went into the library, where the firelight 
was the only light, and sat down to enjoy the rapture of being together again. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 209 

Angela with her arm about her father's neck, Harold standing on the rug, tall 
and straight as a young pine tree, the mother on the lounge, breathing now 
and then a long sigh of happiness. 

■ Oh, I haven't seen anything so good since I've been gone," said 
Angela. "This dear old room, the books, the oleander tree — just think of 
its being in bloom for me ! Cathedrals and palaces and pictures are all very 
well and I'm glad I've seen them. But they're not to be spoken of beside being 
here and finding you all alive and well, and so dear, so dear ! " cried Angela, 
pulling her father down so that she might put the other arm about her 
mother. 

" I say," said Harold, " where do I come in ? " 

" You," said Angela, looking up and laughing, " never went out. I used 
to pity the girls over there who had no brother, the strongest man in his class, 
the stroke in his boat, and just Ai in his mid-years." 

" I'll be content with a B," said Harold. 

" When there is an A ! " cried Angela. " Why, if he is going to be content 
with B I shall have to go to the Annex, just to keep him up to A ! " 

"Sort of a guardian angel," said Harold. "Well, I need one. Every 
fellow needs one." 

" Now, Harold, darling, you know you can't be content with anything less 
than the best. Papa never was. Why, I can remember papa's saying, 'No, 
no, the best is good enough for me,' when he used to carry you around on his 
shoulder. How proud you were of him, papa ! " She was standing now on 
the rug beside Harold, the fire behind her glowing rosy through the edges of 
her white gown. " And now it is his turn to be proud of you. I used to be 
when I saw other girls with fussy fathers, and tyrannical fathers, and ignorant 
underbred ones, and fathers who had made money in strange ways. There was 
a girl I saw in Algiers — she was dreadfully homesick — and Aunt Sylvia said 
her father could never come back to this country. I did pity her so ! And do 
you believe," continued Angela, talkative with excitement and pleasure, " there 
was a man— he seemed quite a gentleman — coming over in the steamer with us, 
and it seemed he was in charge of officers — he was an embezzler or something 
dreadful ; perhaps it was forgery— and they were taking him home for his trial. 
And people said his daughter had died of a broken heart on account of it. And 
when I heard about it I just went into our stateroom and knelt down and 
thanked God that my dear father was upright to the very core of his being — the 
very soul of honor. That poor girl," said Angela wistfully, still standing and 
twisting the long coil of hair about her fingers, " I don't wonder; I should have 
died, too, if I had been in her place. Because, you know, it must have seemed 
to her as if the sky itself had fallen — your father does seem to be something 



2io STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

next to God. It would be like waking- some morning to find there wasn't any 
sun — there wasn't any God." 

4 But suppose," said Mr. Rosillon, "that he had never been found out?" 

"Well, all the same she would have lost her father! O papa! " she ex- 
claimed, "I do believe that one reason I am so happy is because you are your- 
self, because you are my father, and I feel so safe ! I said to Aunt Sylvia that 
it seemed like selfish exultation to think that I should never die of a broken 
heart with my father the best, the truest, the most noble, of the most inflexi- 
ble honesty — Why, papa!" she exclaimed, she and Harold springing forward 
together. "What is it? Is anything the matter ? You are ghastly " 

"Nothing, nothing," Mr. Rosillon managed to say, waving her off. "The 
air* is a little close — and I have been — perhaps — excited — your coming — your 
panegyric" — and he laughed uneasily and rose somewhat blindly and reeled 
and fell backward into his chair. For at that moment the maid, bringing in 
the lamps had turned them up, and Angela crying out her joyous words, white 
and tall in the sudden glow of the light, seemed like some sweet but terrible 
accusing angel standing before him lost in the blackness of hell. 

Mr. Rosillon recovered himself in a moment or two, but through the 
simple dinner to which they were presently summoned he was like one half- 
dazed. 

" My dear," said his wife, " you mustn't let the children's return move you 
so. You're not eating a morsel." 

" He's wondering how under heaven he is to clothe this angel he has drawn 
down," said Harold. A swift exultation filled Mr. Rosillon that this peerless 
girl of his would wear purple and fine linen the rest of her days, and that he 
could give it to her. " I suppose he'll say, 1 ' added Harold, " that this par- 
ticular angel is already clothed with righteousness and won't need a bank 
account." 

"Indeed she will," laughed Angela. "And what's more, she'll earn it 
herself ! She is going to do all sorts of good work, and she wants honest 
money for it, and that won't be money her father gives her " 

Mr. Rosillon started. Why not ? What did she mean ? What did she 
know ? And then he laughed at himself. Who could know anything ? What 
was there to know ? 

" For then it would be his gift while she pretended it was hers," Angela 

went on. " And so you see" 

* You lay great stress on honest money," said Harold "For my part, 
any money that I can get is honest money enough for me. " 

" No, indeed ! " Angela cried. " A curse would go with it if it wasn't hon- 
estly come by. I should be afraid of it " 






vSTEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 211 

"Do you mean, Angela," said her father, "that if I, for instance, gave 
you money that I had not acquired in an — an honorable manner " 

" What an impossible idea, papa! You of all people! I can't even dream 
of it" 

"The governor," said Harold, "who is so straight he bends back!" 

" Well, we won't dream of it," said Mr. Rosillon. "When is your Aunt 
Sylvia coming? I wan't to see her about some business. And what is this 
delay with the trunks? Harold had better go out and telegraph about them.'' 
And so Mr. Rosillon held himself A ogether till dinner was over and Angela had 
brought him his pipe and a light, and Harold having gone off on his errand, 
they sat around the library hearth again till, the clock outside striking nine, 
her mother carried off the girl to her own room for an early rest, and left Mr. 
Rosillon among the falling shadows. A moment he stood up and lifted his 
arms as if he threw off a burden — a burden, some subtle consciousness told 
him, that he was always to feel in his child's presence. And then he fell back 
in his armchair and lay there, so many thoughts whirling disjointedly through 
his mind that he could seize none and was practically in a sort of stupor. 
Through the bewilderment of these thoughts whirling with that speed which is 
so swift that it seems motionless, one figure kept recurring — it was that of a 
young man whose face burned with shame for his father — it was that of a 
young man who inherited the quality of a thief and brought all his splendid 
promise to dust. All that then disappeared only to be followed by another, 
Angela dead - white and still as clay, and looking at him with great bitter eyes 
that searched his soul, and he seemed to shrivel before them with a physical 
agony. 

Through the blackness of his mood, far, far away, fell the tone of a bell — 
a clock was striking ten. Directly afterward a fire alarm sounded, booming 
close upon his ears, and then he heard the horses dashing by, and every hoof 
seemed to strike a spark of fire inside his train. 

The alarm was for quite another portion of the town ; he knew it had 
nothing to do with the bank ; but he dragged himself up mechanically to go to 
an upper window, as his wont had been upon an alarm. But as he reached the 
foot of the stairs and glanced up, there stood Angela looking down at him, 
pausing on the way from her mother's room to her own ; and whether she had 
been saying her old prayers at her mother's side, or whether it were just the 
whiteness and sweetness of her own spirit, the look on her face appalled him, 
and he turned suddenly without the good-night for which she was waiting, 
plunged into his den, and two minutes afterward the door had slammed behind 
him and he was running for the bank as if he were running a race for the prize 
cf his own soul. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 213 

It was a mild, spring night, with an immense sky, through which the wind 
drove the clouds, and now and then the moon ran out on a long rift and sailed 
away again into cavernous darkness. Fragrances of blossoming willows and 
springing grass came in long puffs in the squares where the trees tossed on 
high and beat and swept the sward and sent strange shadows shifting acros° the 
sward. But rushing on with a breathless haste, except, mechanically, when he 
chanced to meet anyone, Mr. Rosillon knew nothing of wind or weather save 
for some unconscious formula that it was an awful night for a fire. Three or 
four thoughts ran over and over each other as if his mind were a treadmill — 
that he must get there, there was a train of powder to be scattered, to be wet, 
there were some things to be put back in the safe, and there was Angela. Yes, 
yes, he must get there, he must scatter that powder before the fire reached it, 
he must get the things into the safe and then give the alarm. Angela's father 
was an honest man ! He must never see the look on her face and be afraid to 
meet it ! There was to be no shame and anguish for Angela. And he 
quickened his steps till he was almost running, and reached the bank door just 
as a policeman came sauntering up the street on his round. 

It seemed as if he never could drag out that key, never could fit it to the 
lock. His heart was beating in the tips of his fingers — he feared he was too 
late, he smelled the smoke, he thought he saw light through a chink of the 
basement — oh, to get in before that policeman caught sight of him ! He was on 
fire himself from head to foot. And then the bolt turned, the door gave way, 
a cloud of smoke poured out as he dashed in, gathering as he went the parcels 
that he carried. He made three strides toward the safe, turned suddenly with 
a blinding flash in his eyes, heard a report like the crack of doom, and fell, face 
down, unconscious, with the gold, the bonds, the bills beneath him. 

Murphy, who had been unwilling to impose on good nature, and so had 
hastened back before the time, arrived at the moment the policeman came run- 
ning up, and together they dragged Mr. Rosillon and the packages he still 
clutched in a death-grip, out of the smoke of fire and ruin, and turned in the 
alarm. 

" Oh, holy Lord !" said the policeman, as they put him down. 

"Do be looking at him !" said Murphy. " He's given the life of him to 
save the bank money." 

" He's done that ! 

" He's been in it this one and twenty year, an* it wor the same to him as 
his own childer, more betoken." 

When Mr. Rosillon again became conscious he hesitated to open his eyes — 
his first idea that he was dead, changing to the assurance that without any 
doubt he was in prison. Yet there had been familiar sounds — and then a quick, 



2I4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

wary glance showed him his wife and Angela and the accustomed things of his 
own room. His lips moved, but he could say nothing. 

4 : It is all right, papa, it is all right ! " cried Angela. " And, oh, we are so 
glad and thankful ; we are so proud of you, papa ! " 

This was a new revelation. And as all things come to him that waits, Mr. 
Rosillon waited. From time to time in his drowsing, and as he lay silent, he 
gathered that the fire had been extinguished with but little damage to the bank, 
and that he had done something heroic. He took the drops and the nourish- 
ment that were brought to him and fell off again into deep sleep. He had, of 
course, been stunned, and there had been some fear of concussion of the brain; 
a doctor and a hospital nurse were busy about him for a while, he was vaguely 
aware, and then by slow degrees full consciousness came back to him. 

But he said nothing. He was thinking, thinking, feebly at first, and then 
with all his might, that if he were really to get out of this clear, and all could 
by any possibility be as before, the cost of the safe and the expenses of the fire 
could be paid back to the bank in small sums and excite no suspicion, and he 
could account for his presence there. How could he account for his presence 
there ? Oh, yes, it had slipped his mind — he had let Murphy go. He ought 
not to have let Murphy go. But the child was sick. And he had felt uneasy 
and had gone back. That was the truth. If it was not the whole truth, if it 
were a lie masquerading as the truth, he would have to live under the shadow 
of so much of it as was a lie all his life. That would have to be his punish- 
ment. It seemed to him that it would be an unspeakable relief if he could 
believe that for that little while he had been mad. 

Mr. Rosillon was past all danger, lying back among his pillows, pale and 
weak, and with hardly any hold on life ; it seemed as if, indeed, it were some- 
thing loathsome that he dreaded to take up again, when Mr. Thursden came 
in. Angela opened the door to him, standing up straight and tall like a young 
silver birch, in her pale green gown, her face rippling with sunshine and joy. 

"Well, Rosillon," said Mr, Thursden, " glad to get you back, by all that's 
good! We thought we were going to lose you one time." 

" Mr. Thursden," said Rosillon, his great hollow eyes dark with shadows, 
as the president's big, warm hand closed around his feeble fingers, " I have 
been down to the gates of hell ! " 

11 1 should have been down there if it hadn't been for you, you mean ! I 
swear, Rosillon, I haven't any words to express my sense of what you did. 
never heard, I never dreamed of such devotion to' duty as that ! Why, it's 
superhuman, such courage! Going to the safe and getting out the valuables 
for us in the face of that fire and that explosion. I wouldn't have done it for 
all the gold in Christendom, or the whole plant of ' Pipsissewa.' And I tell you 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



215 



the directors feel just as I do about it. And we've had a meeting and cast 
about in some way to show our appreciation for your act, and we have decided — 
I confess the proposition was mine, knowing your wish — that the old Rosillon 
house shall be a testimonial of our gratitude. And it won't tell the half of it. 
Where the deuce is my handkerchief ? And now, shall we have the deeds made 
out in your name or in the name of your wife ? " And the president, whose 
voice a moment before had been trembling quite humanly, began to swell 
visibly with his magnanimity. 

11 Mr. Thursden," said the other, " if you think I have done my duty" 

"Oh, duty ! Duty carried to the highest point ! Duty" 

"Then I can take no other reward. I want no reward for doing my 
duty." 

11 But, Rosillon, my good fellow " 

"No, no. I have been doing some thinking while lying here. I have 
turned over what you said — it seems a year, a lifetime ago— that the house 
would be a millstone around my neck. I don't want it. I can't take it. I am 
sensible of your goodness, of the generosity of the directors, but it must end 

here . I will go back to the bank when I am able if you will allow me " 

44 Allow you ! " 

" And all shall be as before. But no reward, Mr. Thursden." 
" I see, I see. By George, Rosillon, you're the noblest fellow — no, you're 
the most foolish, the most quixotic I ever met. Just think twice about the 

house. Why, if you don't want to keep it you can sell it " 

" Sell that house ! No — I— I mean let Jersey have it, if he wants. I will 
stay here. This house where my wife and I set out the trees and planted the 
garden, where my children were born, where I have come up out of hell to find 
— not deserving it — this angel waiting for me," the gloomy eyes resting on 
Angela, the lips breaking into a smile, " this shall be the Rosillon house, and 
I will have no other." 




216 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER NINTH. 



In a Dangerous Place. 

Thou treadst upon enchanted ground, 
Perils and snares beset thee round. 

— Anon. 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. 

— Adapted from Cur ran. 

O Rose, thou art sick! 

The invisible worm 
That flies in the night, 

In the howling storm, 
Has found out thy bed 

Of crimson joy, 
And his dark secret love 

Does thy life destroy. 

— William Blake. 

If the germs gave the fever, why didn't they have the fever? How could they give a 
thing they didn't have? — A Child's Story. 

The river Rhine, it is well known, 
Doth wash your city of Cologne, 
But tell me, nymphs, what power divine 
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine? 

— Coleridge. 

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought 
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 

— Dryden. 

Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of — a blessing that money 
cannot buy. — Izaak Walton. 

The Health of the Home. 

In obtaining this house which is to be so dear a shelter, be it on the as- 
phalt or tinder the green bough, we have of course been particular about the 
site, for it may be "writ large but the country is healthful only when it is 
healthful," and this sanitary condition is not to be taken for granted. Rose- 
bushes in the door-yard in too frequent cases supersede drain-tiles under it, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



217 




and the cupola too rarely 
holds a ventilating shaft. In 
the city there are many 
houses that are built over old 
water courses, and the would- 
be occupant is wise when he 
procures an old map of the 
city, which will let him 
know whether or net he is 
subject to this 
danger. 

It is the houses 
built over these 
old choked or 
diverted water 
courses, whose 
occupants are the 
sufferers from 
malaria. In the 
country house 
the chief risks to 
health come from 
the pollution cf 
the water sup- 
ply, and of the 
air, by contact 
with waste mat- 
ter. Owners of 
property are left 
to build or not to 
build their drains 
and to bestow 
them perhaps as 

ignorance and indolence prompts, with no official supervision, and the conse- 
quence is, that sometimes the loveliest spots are nests of low fever, diphtheria 
and dysentery. 



UNABLE TO LOOK A MAN IN THE FACE. 



Rock and Gravel. 

In chcosing the location of the country house, it is to be supposed that 
we have given preference to a region of gravelly or sandy soil, or where we 



2 i8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

could have founded it on a rock, clay soils holding the surface water too long, 
and making the air damp and chilly. 

Wherever the waste could contaminate drinking water with putrefying 
organic matter, we shall have found it the safer way to substitute rain-water 
for cooking and drinking purposes. If the roof and gutters are kept clean, 
and the rain water collected and stored in cisterns, and then filtered, all which 
can be easily done, the supply will be sufficient, and perfectly healthful. It 
is, however, wiser to boil it for drinking, then cool, and afterward aerate it. 
If filters are used for purification, they must be taken apart and the strainers 
carefully washed and dried at least once a fortnight. Otherwise they become 
useless, the sand and charcoal retaining organic impurities, and imparting a 
disagreeable taste to the water. 

No kitchen slops, either from wash-tubs or dish-pan, must be thrown 
upon the ground, or into that open drain too often found at the back of the 
usual country dwelling. Organic waste festers in the hot sun, and the satu- 
rated ground gives forth incense fit for Beelzebub, god of flies. All house- 
hold waste should be removed as fast as it gathers, and lightly buried. In 
the dark laboratory of the earth noxious matter is turned at once to sweet and 
wholesome uses. Lawn and garden thrive on what is fatal to man. But if 
this can not be done, then the kitchen waste should be burned two or three 
times a day. No standing pails of garbage should be allowed to tempt flies 
and defile the fragrant air. 



The Cellar. 



The condition of the cellar is far more important than that of the parlor. 
In light rooms dirt is comparatively harmless. In dark places it is a lurking 
danger. No old wood, no vegetables, no rubbish of any kind, should be 
allowed to cumber the cellar, which should have a water-proof and air-tight 
floor, to prevent ground air and soil moisture from rising to the living-rooms. 
Whether the floor and walls be cemented or not, it is necessary that all cellar 
doors and windows should be daily opened for free circulation of air. 

The water from the eaves, if not saved in a cistern, should be carried 
so far from the house in well-laid pipes that there will be no contiguous sur- 
face dampness or wet foundation walls. Dampness is a ready vehicle for 
disease, as well as a fruitful cause of it. Another source of danger is decay- 
ing vegetable refuse in garden or grounds. Careless servants leave rhubarb 
leaves, prunings of vines, or weeds wherever they fall, instead of taking them 
to the compost pit or burning them. If they are out of sight they are out of 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 219 

mind, till they recall themselves in visitations of headaches, aching bones, or 
irritable tempers. 

In short, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty from disease, as from 
other usurpers. Voltaire said that incantations would destroy a flock of sheep 
— {/administered with the proper quantity of arsenic. But if we put a super- 
stitious faith in country air, to the neglect of constant scrutiny and intelli- 
gent precaution, it is likely that our last state will be worse than our first. 
It is when the early autumn weather sets in. bringing cool nights, treading 
close upon the heel of hot days, that the demon of fever and infection is most 
apt to walk abroad, and our house-holders will find there is no time so good as 
the later autumn weather, just as the black frost falls, for exorcising the be- 
ing that makes such destruction. Then, in the safe chilliness of the nights 
and days the places that he has haunted can be barricaded against his return, 
and the nests in which his evil attendance has brooded can be cleared of their 
presence for once and all. 



The Prevention that Is Better than Cure. 

It is when pickling and preserving and house-cleaning are over that the 
good house-wife will turn her attention to these affairs, more vital by far than 
anything that conduces merely to the pleasure of the eye, or of the table, and 
will look about her to see if her drains and sinks, her well and water-pipes, 
are in good order, and if her cellar is what a cellar should be, underlying as 
it does, the whole life of the house, and capable of sending, from its position 
in the sub-structure, bane or blessing, pure air or fetid, through every crevice 
of the dwelling. And there is no circumstance, by-the-way, that points more 
plainly to the wisdom of making every exertion to own one's home, of fore- 
going luxury and display and all other gratification that can be foregone with 
safety to soul and body, and laying away the wherewithal to purchase the 
place with which one can do as one chooses, and, uprooting what is already 
wrong, plant wells and dig drains where it is best: wisdom, since although the 
expenditure of the same money in choice food, in fine raiment, or in costly 
equipage may be even more delightful, there are no delights that are equal 
to those of health, and health can only be permanently secured when we are 
masters of our own situation. If the drain that receives the outflow of the 
house connected with the refrigerator be too near the well, or if the con- 
duits from the sink, apt to be made of wood, and frequently leaking on the 
way, are equally near, there is no human power that can bar out the infectious 
fever from that house except the removal of the drains and conduits to a safe 



220 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




distance; for, inappreciably to 
taste cr scent, atom by atom, 
drop by drop, the well is poison- 
ed, the milk in the refrigerator is 
poisoned, and life is surer and 
better underneath the dew of the 
upas-tree. 

But the position of these things 
it is not always in the housewife's 
power to determine, and she must 
make the best of things as they 
are, and the best is to have them 
cleansed yearly in ■ the frosty 
weather, when the evil germs set 
free at their opening perish of the 
withering chill before they can 
reach the stomachs and lungs of 
the inmates of the house. 

A thorough cleansing of these 
spots every fall is not so expen- 
sive as a course of doctor's visits, 
and does not mount up like the 
druggist's bill; and if it is disa- 
greeable,it is one of the prices we 
must pay for enjoyment of com- 
fort and health, remembering that 
there is no such thing as immunity from the trouble of this oversight while 
in a state of civilization ; that this oversight, in fact, is the groundwork of 
civilization, and that in matters of sickness and suffering, as in matters of 
politics, the old adage holds equally true, that " eternal vigilance is the price 
of liberty." 

But if it is ruinous to poison the water of the well from which we drink, 
it is quite as ruinous to poison the air which we breathe, and that is the part 
in the house which the neglected cellar has it in its power to play. Wherever 
vegetables have been stored, there some have run over the bins and been 
trodden on the floor, or have run into the dark corners of the bins and been 
overlooked, till they have decayed and transmitted their decay to others; 
there has been a "sup of milk" spilled on the floor, a bit of butter, a few 
drops of the drippings, some greasy brine from the barrel, some festering 
stuff from a broken bottle ; there is a bit of mould here, a fungus there — in 



REELED AND FELL BACKWARD. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 221 

short, the witches' caldron is as ready as when the witches danced round it on 
the heath of Forres, and threw into it their horrid ingredients. Let now a 
wet season arrive upon this condition of things, let a hot and humid August 
come, or let a January thaw of snow and slush set in, let some water trickle 
into the cellar, or let the stones of the wall merely absorb the dampness and 
suffer it to ooze through there, and the putrid air that steals up through the 
studding of the walls, behind every partition, up beside every chimney, and 
through every door and every crack, brings disease stalking in with the 
death's-head behind it, only to go out of the door feet foremost. 



The Only Curse on the House. 

"There's a curse on the house, sure," said an old servant once. "The 
children all die as sune's they're born. The first of 'em went with the dysen- 
tery; then Miss Ellie, the darlint, follows, with — what's this ye're afther 
callin' it? — the dipthairy; the twins have gone, too, with the scarlet faver; 
and there's the master down himself now with the typhus. " 

"Perhaps the fault is in the house," we suggested. 

"Dade a bit of it, thin!" cried the faithful woman. "Wasn't it claned 
in the spring, and, as ye may say, scraped? And wasn't there bushels of the 
wet dirt, such as you niver see, carried out of the cellar and spread over the 
garden, till the ?orn was that splendid the one ear was big enough for two?" 

There surely was a curse on that house — the curse of carelessness, un- 
cleanness, and unthrif t ; and the hands that would have been thrust into fire 
for those dead children had dealt them their death-blows. 

Throughout the world's history everywhere this subject of pure air in 
the dwelling has received the attention of the thoughtful, and been laughed 
at by the ignorant. Certain of the ancients had a fancy that various plants of 
pungent odor prevented infection, and they set them in the way and about 
their homes — a practice at which while we of to-day smile, the camphor bag 
is carried in our pockets whenever small-pox or cholera prevails. When the 
plague raged in Italy, all the people who were able left Rome and flocked into 
a little town round which the laurel grew in luxuriance. We imagine there 
could have been nothing in it, or else the growth of the laurel would have 
been fostered round that Italian city into which some friends of ours once 
strolled and found the stone and sculptured houses, the deep-rutted paved 
streets, the churches and market-place and stalls, all intact but overgrown, 
and forsaken by every living soul. The fever had been there before them, 
and had desolated it. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



Yet physicians have 
thought that a fearful 
cholera season was caused 
by an absence of ozone 
from the atmosphere, that 
bracing and life-giving 
principle which we seek at 
the sea-side, and which is 
largely generated by elec- 
trical and phosphoric agen- 
cies. And as many plants — 
notably, it is said, various 
laurels, lavender, hyacinth, 
mignonette, and the ber- 
gamot orange — evolve 
ozone in the oxidation of 
their aromas, and as in our 
own day the eucalyptus 
has been found to be of 
such immense value in ma- 
larial regions in absorbing 
and converting the poison, 
it would seem as if there 
were some spark of reason 
in the idea of the ancients 
just mentioned, and that 
they did not plant the most 
aromatic flowers and offer 
the richest balsams on the 
altar of the pestilence for 
nothing. 
But this is at best somewhat fanciful and experimental, and at any rate 
none of us can rely on such uncertain aid in securing the safety of our daily 
and nightly breathing should we try it. Let us plant as many odorous flowers 
as we will about our dwellings, it will be none the less necessary for us to 
purge those dwellings of all accumulated foulness whenever the season arrives 
in which it can be done with safety to ourselves and others, and whitewash 
our cellar walls and sprinkle their floors, and all other equally dangerous spots 
with copperas, or with that guardian of domestic life, the ill-smelling but 
beneficent chloride of lime. Only by such provision can we hear the dread- 




LOOKING DOWN AT HIM. 



STEPPING STOXES TO HAPPINESS. 223 

f ill names of the autumnal diseases without a shudder, and only when we have 
exercised it have we a right to consider the load of responsibility lifted from 
our shoulders. 



We or Providence to Blame ? 

When we read of great natural calamities, the floods, the freezings, 
the fires, or of the great unnatural ones, the murders, and wars, and 
famines, we class them under the head of Acts of Providence, forgetful 
that almost every one of them is within our own control. We read that a dis- 
tant city is little better than one great pest-house with the small-pox ; that 
diphtheria is seen to be moving — by the reports that come into the physicians' 
offices, and are jotted again on the map — with the slow but sure tread of an 
army on a march, through the midland country; that the scarlet fever is ram- 
pant like a terrible fiend in the North. The only one of these things that we 
make any positive preparation for is the small-pox ; we secure ourselves from 
it, as far as may be, before it comes, by vaccination, and society puts us in 
quarantine if it should reach us, and demands fumigation and disinfection 
when it has left us. For the others, they always seem less tangible and possi- 
ble; they are far off, and they may not affect us ; we seldom dream of any 
preparation to hinder their fell visits, and society laughs at the idea of extra 
precaution to prevent the diseases from spreading, or of much attempt at 
purification after they have passed and left us for fresh prey. So much is 
this the case that we have even known patients in diphtheria to be incensed 
at not receiving the kisses customary in health; have seen fine ladies making 
calls in a house where two or three children were down with scarlet fever, 
quite careless as to whether their next call was to be made in one where the 
children had not yet received the dark guest; and have met with the servants 
of a house as yet safe chatting cozily in the kitchen with the servants of the 
house where the nursery was a hospital of contagion; and this when that es- 
pecial disease is the most dreadful in all the known category of diseases; both 
at its height and in its results, and when the germs of its contagion live for 
weeks, and are so subtile and powerful that they have even been carried hun- 
dreds of miles in a letter. 

We fear the small-pox, it would appear, chiefly because it robs us of what 
beautv or comeliness we may possess ; because it isolates us from neighbors 
and condemns us to some weeks of solitude; because it occasions so much 
more fuss and inconvenience in the house than most forms of illness do. 
It can hardlv be anything else that moves us particularly in regard to it, 
since it is not more loathsome, not more painful, seldom if ever more deadly, 



224 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




HE REMEMBERED THE PLACE. 

than the other diseases named. To be sure, these other diseases are the par- 
ticular foes of children, while the former attacks ourselves as well, and so 
brings a more selfish element into play when we are people who have no 
children ; but when we are people who have children, there is no suffering we 
would not take upon ourselves rather than have scarlet fever and diphtheria 
come where our children are. But every physician will assure you that he 
prefers to deal with the small-pox rather than with the others, for that has a 
plain and open course, and he always knows where to find it day by day; but 
the fiend of its kindred fever burrows in the dark, and sometimes under- 
mines the whole foundations of life before its deadly presence is suspected. 
When there shall be abroad among all people, as there is now among intelli- 
gent and well-informed people, the same wholesome horror of scarlet fever 
and diphtheria that there is of small-pox and of leprosy and of typhus, the 
world will begin to make some headway in the effort to be rid of these cruel 
desolators. 



Children's Diseases. 

We all love our children as we love ourselves ; it is, in fact, an instinct 
rather than a virtue ; and we would protect them at the sacrifice of our own 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 225 

lives. But let there be an epidemic of this nature in the town where we live, 
and, heroic as our will may be, with what discretion do we exercise it? In 
the first place, we shut the babies up from the free air lest a whiff of the sick- 
ness should enter at the window or door, and so we force them to breathe, 
to large extent, a vitiated atmosphere that makes them the easier prey if at- 
tacked. Then we allow them to play with the cats and the long-haired dogs 
which have access everywhere, running up everybody's back -yard at all 
hours, and prevented by nothing known from carrying the contagion of any 
disease in their convenient coats. In the mean time, if a stranger comes to 
the house, ignorant though we may be of what he is and where he came from, 
we never think of such a thing as hindering him from petting the children if 
he pleases. We keep no disinfectant in constant use after we know the epi- 
demic exists; and finally, we let the children have as much as they wish of 
the companionship of the maids, who, by reason of their crowded church- 
going, are so very likely to gather the contagion in their garments. 

Look a moment at that last statement. Disease finds its favorite food in 
the region of poverty, bad air, narrow quarters, and in the unhealthy blood 
made by poor and insufficient diet. It is universally acknowledged that such 
spots are the hot-bed and propagating ground of everything of the sort. 
The unfortunate people whom the disease thus victimizes, frequently going 
through the trial without a physician, knowing nothing of fumigation or dis- 
infection, and laughing to scorn what they happen to hear of it, seldom deny- 
ing themselves the pleasure of free going and coming, can not but be the 
means of sadly spreading the evil from which they suffer. If there are half a 
dozen families in a house, as not unfrequently happens, and the sickness be 
in one of those families, none of the well members of that family would think 
of staying at home from church, and of course none of the members of the 
other five families who do not feel themselves to be affected; and what is 
there, then, to prohibit them from taking out with them and scattering 
through the congregation the germs of the disease, and the maid from inno- 
cently and ignorantly bringing them home in her shawl to the ruin of the 
child whom she also loves in common with the rest of the house, and whom 
she would do her utmost to save? It seems then as if it were not at all too 
much to say that it is no act of Providence by which we are smitten when 
such disease invades us, but only our own neglect and that of others. 



Disinfectants. 



It would be a simple and easy thing to keep a dish of carbolic acid or 
other better disinfectant, exhaling in the house in order to kill, or to make 



226 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the effort to kill, and, at all events, weaken, any of the poisonous germs that 
might effect an entrance on the air; to dissolve a little chloride of lime; to 
burn a pinch of coffee every now and then, or some sugar or vinegar: if it is 
disagreeable, it is safe ; and no one can positively assert what prevention it 
might not prove to far worse trouble than a slightly offensive odor ever is. 
We are told that it was given to man to "reduce the earth." When in some 
distant era that shall be effectually done , it is to be hoped that the germs of 
many of these terrors will have no breeding-place left there. But till then it 
is our duty to assist in the great work ; and we venture to believe that if every 
house where such contagious and heart-breaking disease is found were to be 
quarantined by the yellow flag as small-pox is, and if it were fumigated with 
sulphur smoke, purified with atomized disinfectants during the reign and on 
the disappearance of the trouble, the ravages of the malignant monster, deso- 
lating households as it goes, would be largely checked, if the monster itself 
were not thus finally destroyed from the face of the earth. 



The Scarlet Fever. 

We can need all these precautions for nothing so much as for the scarlet fever, 
which, although like death it has all seasons for its own, nevertheless seems 
always to rage with more vehemence when the mercury gets down among the 
small figures. 

Unlike their habit when the measles are in question, which many mothers 
think it desirable for their children to have early, there is almost no pains 
which wise mothers will not take to avert from their children this evil of scarlet 
fever, than which no other disease is so much to be dreaded. And it is justly 
that this dread is felt ; for the scarlet fever, even if the little patient escapes 
with life, is likely to poison the blood, to injure the brain, to destroy the 
hearing, or to affect to deadly purpose some vital organ with long and slow 
and painful decay. Poe's terrible story of the Masque of the Red Death had 
in it some elements of the horror that belcngs to this pestilence that walketh 
by noonday — and I have known an aged physician who never could speak of 
this especial form of fever without tears springing to his eyes, so much misery 
to child and parent and household had he seen it bring about. 

When we see a disease which, even on recovery, drags after it in most 
instances long sequelae of other ailments, often veiled and obscure and not 
easy to reach and treat — kidney affections, lung troubles, glandular difficul- 
ties, idiocy, and the rest — we can judge of the virulence of the original thing 
itself. And if by any chance we see the child itself enduring the first dis- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 227 

tress, the final agony, crying out in blind wonder at its own suffering, yield- 
ing up its brief life perhaps in delirium, perhaps in faintness, with the pangs 
of suspense and despair of the mother bending over it, and the desolation of 
the home it leaves so empty of its sweet presence, till it seems as if there 
were nothing but suffering in the world — when by any chance we have seen 
all this, have fought our own fight with a disease capable of working such 
woe — then it seems to us that we would almost give our own life rather than 
be the means of diffusing such trouble, of increasing the suffering of the 
world, of bringing such pain and sorrow upon another person who loved a 
child. 

Yet it is an almost universal thing for families — every individual of whom 
would feel all this shrinking from increasing the sorrows of the world — in- 
stead of doing their utmost to prevent the spread of the terrible infection, 
acting with an almost criminal carelessness in the matter, and that, of course, 
with no intention other than good ones, but partly from ignorance and partly 
from thoughtlessness and partly from a general trusting to luck. There is 
a case of fever in the house; they isolate it, and then they think they have 
done their whole duty; they themselves, if not needed in attendance, go and 
come, here and there, in and out, as they please. "Oh, it is only a slight 
case!" they answer you if you question their action, forgetful of the fact that 
the most malignant form can be developed from the contagion of the very 
slightest case of scarlatina, scarlatina being the generic name of the disease 
in any form, and not merely of its slightest development. The doctor goes 
and comes unavoidably through the hall and up and down the common stair- 
way between the door and the sick-room ; nobody knows how many germs of 
the disease clinging to the woolen fibres of his garments to be scattered in 
the hall and on the stairs, over which the rest of the family pass necessarily 
many times a day, to gather them up in their own clothes, and have them 
ready to disseminate whenever they go out among people. The nurses, too, 
and those in attendance on the sick-room, go up and down into the kitchen 
and elsewhere about the house, carrying with them more or less of the atmos- 
phere of the room and all that belongs to it, again to be possibly caught up 
by those who have never gone near the patient; and, as I have said, the very 
dogs and cats about the place, to say nothing of the flies, are liable to gather 
the dangerous unknown force in their long fur, and bring it to the other 
members of the family. If then these other members of the family, thus vir- 
tually contaminated, go out freely on the street, what deadly work is it they 
do, all unintentionally and unconsciously, what seeds of death and sorrow 
do they scatter with every wave of their garments as they walk and as they 
encounter people on the streets or venture into houses' 



228 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Doubtless it is hard and unpleasant, a sort of imprisonment, indeed, for 
people not immediately concerned in the work for the sick to shut themselves 
up when such a trouble is in the house ; but there are always ways for them 
to get enough fresh air to keep themselves in health. And for the rest of it, 
if the thing comes, it should be received like any other dispensation, and 
borne with becoming strength and self-denial, even if that requires abstinence 
from church and concert and call, the foregoing of the morning shopping and 
the afternoon stroll. For fully three weeks after the patient is out of danger 
and convalescing a process called desquamation — a shedding of the scarf skin 
— goes on with the little person, and every flake of that cuticle wafted 
abroad is but inoculation of the disease wherever received. Isolation, 
then, can not be too much regarded; every one in the world must now 
know the value and necessity of disinfection, in its most extended 
form; but many forget or are not aware of the need of this complete 
isolation. There is nothing fine in the courage or bravado of those 
who would visit or go errands to the dwellings where this sickness exists. It 
is very easy to be courageous for other people, and it is other people, and not 
one's self, that the grown person endangers by going into the way of the 
disease, and those other people helpless little children. Grown people are 
seldom in much danger of receiving the contagion for themselves, but they 
can carry it in their clothes ; and knowing this, and knowing the alarming 
vitality of the germ, and how long afterward it can maintain this devastating 
vitality with unimpeached power, they would be acting with total want of 
principle, and even of decent human charity, if they did not avoid going to 
the house where scarlet fever exists, and did not also avoid those who come 
out of that house. When people who are aware of the danger do avoid those 
who have come out from these fatal doors, it is not for themselves, it should 
be remembered, nor indeed always for those dear to them as life itself, but 
quite as of£en for the sake of those dear as life to others ; and no one has a. 
right to be offended at this avoidance. „ It is not the people themselves who 
are thus avoided ; it is the terrible trouble whose companionship lurks about 
them. The very individuals who avoid them, or who feel compelled to con- 
demn their want of consideration and care in going abroad, would, it is very 
likely, go to their houses and remain with them, helping and cheering them 
as long as the necessity lasted, but not daring to go out into the world again 
while the least danger of communicating the evil remained. Instead of 
being offended at the avoidance, all persons, on the other hand, would do well 
to prevent the necessity of such avoidance by keeping out of the way them- 
selves and by voluntarily and spontaneously, with noble even if Quixotic re- 
gard, for others, maintaining themselves and their house in a sort of quaran- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



229 




V-v4 



.cL*L 



W*a£<i>»% H- 



tine, which, uncomfortable as it may be to them, is infinitely better than 
sickness and death and the sorrow of vacant houses to others 



The Children, of the Poor. 

When all has been done that can be done to secure sweet ail and sur- 
roundings to the family, whether in town or country, the heads of the house- 
hold have reason to congratulate themselves on the immunity that their own 
darlings have when contrasted with the condition of the children of the very 
poor, especially of those in the worst districts of the city. 

Often when people who have loved and cared for their children to the last 
degree have at length lost them, they think that if their children had been 
allowed to run at large, unwashed, unkempt, unfed, all but undressed, in the 
wet and in the sun, they would have been left alive ; and they look with envy 
at the washerwoman's sturdy babies rolling in the gutter as they go by, while 
their own dear ones, on which they spent such cares, are laid away in silence. 

Their complaint and their envy, however, betray simply an ignorance 
that is widespread concerning the very great mortality among the children of 
the poor in cities. With these poor it is only the sturdy and the hardy that do 
not die in infancy ; those are examples of the survival of the fittest. When 
they, in turn, have children of their own, those children inherit a great deal 
of their parents' hardiness, and live through nearly everything but murder. 
But murder comes to them ; and the community allows the murderer to stalk 
boldly unchallenged at broad mid-day, while he decimates the ranks of those 
that can not afford houses by themselves, with light and st>ace, pure air, pure 
water and dry floors. 

Of all the children rolling in the gutters only a mere fraction endure the 
rough treatment and live. In damp dwellings, pervaded by the foul smell of 
countless sinks and deposits of filth, with fever already, doubtless, in more 



2 3 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

than one of all the many rooms of the tenement, with little to eat, with no 
cleanliness, with unhealthy beds, with insufficient warmth in winter, with 
terrible heats in summer, what an amount of strength does it not need in or- 
der to meet such ills and conquer them ! The mother who nurses these 
children in their babyhood is half starved herself. As soon as they are old 
enough to be left, and sometimes before, she is obliged to let them look out 
for themselves while she is away at her daily drudgery, from which she re- 
turns to them heated and tired out, and all unfit; a little older, and they are 
out-doors in her absence, fighting with the great Shanghai for an apple-core 
or with the neighboring bulldog for a bone, or in-doors setting fire to their 
clothing; and woe betide them, at all times, if they fall sick, for then the 
whole grand army of noxious things marches into the breach, and it is found 
almost impossible for very sick children of these quarters to recover, if left 
in the place where they fell, as any physician will tell you who has had the 
pain of seeing these children mowed down. What the effect of their sur- 
roundings is may be judged from the following instance: "About the year 
1767 it was ascertained that not more than one in twenty-four of the poor 
children received into the work-houses in London lived to be a year old ; so 
that out of two thousand and eight hundred, the average number annually 
admitted, two chousand six hundred and ninety died. This alarming mortal- 
ity induced the Parliament to pass an act obliging the parish officers to send 
their infant poor to be nursed in the country at a proper distance from town. 
After this measure was adopted only four hundred and fifty out of the whole 
number died annually, and the greater part of those deaths happened during 
the three weeks that the children were kept in the work-houses." Human 
nature — at any rate, its physical portion — has not changed during the century 
sufficiently to weaken the force of such a statement, and no broader comment- 
ary can ever be made on the way in which every country wastes its bone and 
sinew in permitting such a state of things to continue, and in not making the 
purification of its by-ways and alleys a matter of public economy. Of course 
more than air is needed — water, time in which to use it, and food — but clean 
air would go a great way toward obviating every evil, and would doubtless 
vastly decrease the bill of mortality. Air that is unvitiated is positively es- 
sential to the health of children in dwellings and out-doors; it is by its means 
that the blood is oxygenated, purified of ill elements, and kept bounding 
along the veins ; and it is through the medium of bad air that a fearful throng 
of diseases are admitted to the tender system. And meanwhile, however it 
may be with the poor, there is many a mother among those by no means poor 
who thinks her own dead darling wanted for nothing, when, if she but knew 
the truth, it wanted the air of heaven, and the air with which she so carefully 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 231 

surrounded and shut it in, the air of her foul cellar and unpurified sinks, was 
its murderer. 

When we have abolished all our nuisances, we will find that we have abol- 
ished with them one almost as bad as many of the others, that of the omni- 
present fly, the little wretch that makes life in town or suburb equally hard to 
bear, but who will not live in multitude unless he has foul provender on which 
to batten. I remember seeing at an entertainment of one ot the many min- 
strel troops ot old times, whose members, by the way, a friend of the colored 
people declared were blacker inside than outside, for all their Equips and 
cranks and wanton wiles,' a performance, known as the "Lively Flea/' which 
always elicits roars of laughter and rounds of applause, as the play-bills have 
it. It is a very simple performance, a mere monodrame; for it consists solely 
of one rather ragged colored person sitting in a chair and playing his banjo — 
the other performer being invisible, not to say imaginary. As the player 
dreamily picks the string and hums the strain, he just as dreamily pauses to 
fillip his ear, as if something had disturbed nim there, but it was not much 
matter, and goes on witn his tune. But before the end of another bar the 
right hand leaves the string again to give a heartier fillip on another spot, 
and still the tune goes on; when suddenly the left hand, flinging the neck of 
the banjo to the right, gives, no fillip, but a good sound slap on a fresh por- 
tion ot the person, and the music resumes its course again, as if that thing 
was settled. But hardly has another stave of the sweet song been sung — so 
sweet that the audience begins to be as much annoyed by that lively flea as 
the sutterer more directly concerned — when up goes the right hand dreamily 
again and seems to rub away some slight thing on the cheek or in the whis- 
ker, and no sooner is that done than the left is obliged to explore the back of 
the neck, and the right picks a string and darts off to the sole of the foot, 
picks another and flies to the left scapula, picks another and deals a blow at a 
knee-cap, suddenly catches the banjo by one string as the left hand in an 
agony flies to the distracted forehead, and the melody of the banjo and of the 
song breaks up incontinently in a sort of double and treble shuffle dance, in 
which hands, feet, head, shoulders, hips, and banjo all join in pursuit of that 
lively flea, which is caught and . cracked to the satisfaction of the spectators, 
in order that the singer may calmly and sweetly conclude his song. 

Well, we all laughed at the poor plantation hand and his flea, some of us 
in spite of ourselves, and all of us without the least idea that scarcely would 
the summer come before we ourselves would be as laughable objects, figuring 
in just such a drama, with the simple difference that the place of that invisi- 
ble lively flea would be taken by the only too visible and just as lively fly — 
that nimble wretch that the moment we have finished proclaiming our July 



2 3 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

independence, surrounds us with his legions, is in our bread, in our tea, in 
our ink, in our cup generally ; that gets crushed in our books, lost in the 
labyrinth of our hair, tickles our eyes, grudges us our flesh and blood, makes 
our life a burden to us ! 



The Lively Fly. 

Yet what an innocent being the little creature seems when in his single 
blessedness he hums about the wintry pane! A cheerful and companionable 
soul left over from the summer, and managing to exist on what sunshine he 
can find in our window. If we do not hold him really in affectionate regard 
then, yet we would no sooner harm him than harm a household pet. We put 
a bit of sugar in his path, we brush down the spider that waylays him and 
we feel flattered if he deserts his luminous retreat to pay a call to the wax in 
our work-basket, or ramble round the margin of our inkstand, or stroll across 
our hand. But when at length the summer comes we realize in ourselves all 
the difference that exists between the calm inhabitant of temperate zones and 
the fiery and cruel native of the tropics. Ruskin tells us that the modification 
of the curve of the drip-stone in the Lombard architecture, as seen in the 
North and seen again under Italian skies, marks the whole round curve of the 
earth between those distant parallels ; and just as broad a curve of the earth 
is shown in the difference in our feelings toward the fly in December and in 
July, and we pursue the little innocent of other weather as vindictively as 
though he was some wild beast out of his lair; as vindictively as he in his turn 
pursues us. 

It seems impossible to us then to believe that we were once so weak as to 
regard him as harmless and show him mercy. If we really did, we anathe- 
matize the folly that in saving one saved the mother of millions. That little 
being, so busy, so blithe, so much occupied with his toilette, is no longer a 
friendly sprite, but has become foul and unclean, singly impish, and in mul- 
titude demoniac. His pleasant song has changed to a bagpipe drone, save 
when it gathers in a shrill alarm of attack. We hear it faintly across our 
dreams, sounding the signal as the first flush of the aurora runs before the 
dawn ; and from that dead hour of prime till at last we rise, haggard and un- 
rested, and driven from our stronghold, we are engaged in a hand-to-hand 
strife with him for the possession of our nose or ears or eyes, whichever it is 
that he may have taken a fancy for, and we feel like that dull book-magnate 
that Mr. Browning threw into the puddle of the hollow tree, where the little 
live creatures "tickled and toused and browsed him all over." We descend 
to breakfast. Be the safeguards what they may, we find two or three of him 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



2 33 




in the cream jug, a swarm 
of him in the sugar bowl; 
he hovers over the chops, 
gets mired in the butter, 
watches his chance for 
the morsel on the w.ay to 
our mouths, and we feel a 
sort of surprise on break- 
ing the eggs or the baked 
potatoes that he does not 
tumble out of them. 
There is not a point of 
the rest of the day that he 
fails to dispute with us. 
There is a mould in the 
inkstand ; we fish it out — 
it is a raft of flies. We 
sit down with our sewing ; 
"he comes and sticks needles and pins into us. He is up our sleeve, down our 
neck, between our lips. He grows aware of the charms of the baby in her 
warm and rosy nap, and eats her up alive. We go for our bath, he is there 
before us ; we go to dinner, and he has rendered us suspicious of every object, 
and taken the zest from appetite ; while at tea he mixes himself with the 
blueberries, and turns plain cake to currant. We brush him off, and he re- 
turns, with a defiant and insulting buzz and threat, nearer than before ; we 
aim a blow at him, and inflict a fatal one upon ourselves. We hail a spider 
as a bosom friend. And at last we grow tired of the unequal contest, and 
resolve upon getting sleep while we may, and forgetful of the morning's rout, 
we ascend to the cool seclusion of our respective rooms. Already half asleep 
we open the door, and the instant the light enters up starts from their own 
slumbers on every coigne of vantage a cloud of witnesses, filling all the air 
with that hot and hateful hum ; and we close the windows, and set down the 
lamp, and tie a knot in the end of a towel, and go to work and slay like Sam 
son. r 

O est le premier pas qui cou'e. After that we feel like the Malays, or the 
Berserkers, who run with their big knives, crying, "Kill! kill!" With what 
vigor we prosecute destruction, and are almost destroyed ourselves in the 
effort! We set dishes of water, in which the patent poisoned paper is soak- 
ing, about the house, and the flies drink and die, and the kitten, beloved play- 
thing, and the Spitz, the baby's faithful guardian, eat the fallen victims of 



234 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

that poison, and die, too. We procure cruel sheets of a viscid preparation and 
lay them in tempting spots, and the flies alight never to extricate themselves 
from the toils again, and a gust of wind blows those sticky sheets over our 
sewing, upon our best book-rack, upon our new silk, and the flies avenge 
themselves in dying. Finally we buy a cage, where a wire cone fits inside of 
a wire cylinder, a tiny aperture in the top of the cone admitting the prey to 
the cylinder but not appearing very obvious to him again, and we observe 
with eagerness the adventuring fly as he slowly explores that cone and ap- 
proaches that aperture. What a dramatic interest attaches to the moment! 
He is the hero of a tragedy — he is David in the cave's mouth — he is Jean 
Valjean. He nears the opening of the trap : will he mount ? will he descend ? 
He thinks better of it; he goes down, and our hearts go down with him; he 
wheels, he puts his head over the brink — for ourselves, we palpitate — he con- 
siders, he crawls boldly in, he is lost! And wretches that we are — with but 
little difference in all these centuries between ourselves and those Roman 
women who watched wild beast and gladiator fight in the arena, and turned 
their thumbs down at the end — we feel paid for all our vexation, and we 
watch fly after fly passing through the fatal aperture, and we go off to sleep, 
secure in the slaughter of Patroclus and his men — to wake up and find Achilles 
and his myrmidons in the field, fell avengers. 

For it was only a momentary victory, a mere ruse de guerre; and we are 
half inclined to abandon ourselves to fate and the fly, and to believe that com- 
ing into the world before the extermination of vermin we came an aeon too 
soon, till we remember a happy possibility, and at every window we have a 
screen of wire gauze, better than the Chinese wall against our enemy, and a 
thing which the least ingenuity can devise and shape, and we make that place 
a desert so far as the fly is concerned, and breathe again in peace, sure that 
we are not going to be tickled wide awake out of our pet nap, and that we are 
not going to be inoculated with all sorts of diseases from that little proboscis 
that fed last one knows not where. And yet fools that we are, we find our- 
selves in the end regarding the one fly left over and humming in the window- 
pane as we did before — as a cheerful and companionable sort of cherub, who 
reminds us of summer and its vanished glories. 



At Autumn Time. 



And when we have enjoyed our screens all summer, and have seen to 
sink and drain and spout and cellar, and to all the work necessary to health 
which we find it best to do in the fall, whether our lives be cast in town or 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



235 



country, we have time to look about and enjoy a world of small dramas still 
going on about us, and at which we may assist if we will as spectators. One 
observes then, for instance, just as much in the city park as in the rural field, 
the way nature works in her laboratory, the way in which the plants prepare 
themselves for their wintry term, and in which the little wild animals, even 
the squirrels and their kind in town, make themselves ready for that great 
general enemy, the cold. 



The Birds When the Days Shorten. 

There is nothing more interesting to watch than the birds and their 
habits, at the time when the days begin to shorten ; the manner in which 
they congregate and confabulate in daily increasing numbers; the swarms 
on swarms of them that suddenly rise from some low meadow as you 
drive by, and for one beautiful moment darken the sky, while their multi- 
tudinous wings quiver and beat and separate ; the trial flights in which they 
seem to be practicing for the long migration; the wonderful music that 
their innumerable shapes seem to dot along the bars made by the tele- 
graph and telephone wires where they alight ; the vast chattering and hum- 
ming wherever they are ; and the profound indifference of those birds that 
have no idea of making a journey, but that intend to take the winter as they 
find it, notably the town sparrows. 

How much charm these bright beings have added to the year, when one 




236 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

has been where one could observe them, it would not be easy to compute; for 
who can tell the value of a lilting measure, or weigh the worth of a flash of 
color? The thrill of gladness one feels when, almost before the ground is 
bare of snow, a robin's pipe is heard; the sweetness that fills the dead prime 
of the day when one awakes before the dawn sends his flushes up the east, 
and hears the world alive with music — who would forego these that has 
known them, or change them for other rapture that out-door nature gives? 
What amusement they make when, fat and saucy with all the stolen cherries, 
they skip along the grass at your side, and presently are disputing with your 
fingers the very pear and plum as they ripen ! And what heartsome pleasure 
they give in their first and in their second nesting, as they steal the thread 
from your spool on the window-sill, the string from the baby's toy and even 
alight upon the old horse himself to pluck some good strong hairs from his 
tail for the better security of the new cradle — anything exceeding their sturdy 
impudence never having been known. Then come the excitements of the 
brood to the on-lookers — the amazement at the tremendous greed of the little 
ones, and the untold lives sacrificed at their shrines ; the admiration of the 
show of fondness and industry by the father, who is fabled to share the labors 
equally with the mother, but who brings, comparatively speaking, very few 
worms to the young Molochs, and sings only when he thinks it is about time 
that his wife was done with this business ; and the horror and anxiety when 
one of the fledgelings falls from the lofty nest — out of which it is a wonder 
they did not all fall at the first — and can not be returned, and Grimalkin is 
known to be ranging abroad. A friend of ours living in town once found an 
almost featherless member of one of these little broods peeping in the grass, 
and neither nest nor parents being in sight, took the little orphan into the 
house, and placing it in a soft nest of cotton-wool in a cage, fed it with the 
yolks of hard-boiled eggs, put down its gaping throat on a pen -handle, making 
herself a slave to that throat by rising long before day to light her spirit-lamp 
and boil her egg. As the little creature thrived and grew, she felt it must 
have stronger food, and stifling her repugnance, procured earth-worms with 
her own delicate fingers, and proceeded to mince them for Master Rob's 
dinners. By this time the little creature was as round and feathered and 
shining as a bird could be, and skipped from room to room after his mistress, 
stoutly resisted the cage, and visited her pillow every morning to pick her 
eyes open when it was time for his breakfast. At length he was able to live 
upon the same fare as the family had, and took his regular place at the break- 
fast table, the moment that the bell rang flying to the sugar bowl, helping 
himself afterward to his favorite dish, and always perching on the morning 
paper, and fighting for his rights upon it, having the advantage of the oth^-** 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 237 

children in his wings, which bore him off at a signal of danger, and kept him 
out of reach till his offenses were forgotten. Anything like a racket de- 
lighted his little soul ; any noise was as good to him as the piping of Pan , 
in the putting in of coal he flew to and fro through the cloud of black dust,, 
enjoying himself with song and chatter; while the manoeuvres of the laun- 
dress and the iridescence of the soap-bubbles of her ''suds" gave him such 
peculiar pleasure that once when she left her occupation for some other he 
gave battle, and nobody knows with what result, if his mistress had not been 
called to the scene by the woman's screams, as she had often before been 
summoned by the indignant cries of the cats that held him only in terror, by 
no means regarding him as an object of prey, but as a monster that had in- 
vaded their domestic peace. Finally, one day, this little imp that so took the 
world for all his own, slipped out of an open window, was heard of once at 
the windows of another house a couple of blocks away, and then, like a bird 
that flew through the Northumbrian king's palace from one darkness to an- 
other, was seen no more. But our friend would not have been without the 
excitement and pleasure of his summer's visit for anything you could 
name. 

And not only are such little romances afforded us by the tiny creatures, 
but there are the epics and heroics of their skirmishes and deadly fights, to 
watch which, if old Greek poets could condescend to describe the battles of 
the pygmies and the cranes, are not entirely beneath our notice. In fact, to- 
the last of the bluebirds that, when we walk abroad in the country 01 come to 
the end of our trolley-ride from town, we see fluttering in crowds about the 
berries of ash and elder and woodbine just before the robins go, to the flocks 
of chickadees that suddenly appear with the snow, to the long strings of the 
wild-geese that go clanging through the heavens with their wild music, to 
the witch-like crows that never go at all, if one uses one's senses there is. 
hardly pleasanter amusement to be had than is found in following the habits 
of these little actors on the boards of summer, with the human passions re- 
peated in a miniature mimicry, and in a grand theatre where the blue sky 
and the waving boughs make the painted scenery and properties, where the 
winds and waters are real, the orchestra, seen and unseen, pipes from the 
leafy screens of the summer that is over and gone all too soon, and whose 
departure makes one impatient for the next, that, among all the other prob 
lems to be solved, it may be seen if the empty nest will be refilled ag.am, 
and if the same bird will sing again to his mate, to his brood, to the universe, 
that song to which, as Michelet says, he himself is, after all, the most delicate: 
auditor, but which may even give pleasure to that creating power "quiregarde 
tendrement un brin d'herbe autant qu'une eloile." 



23S STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Light-Hearted October. 

And while all this goes on, we seem to be breathing new life, and sure 
that all is right in our home we enjoy the invigoration of early autumn with 
a clear conscience. It seems strange that we associate with this season the 
idea of cheerfulness and mirth and light-hearted labor. 

One might suppose that exactly the opposite effect would be produced 
upon us by all the threatening tokens. The dreary time of short dark days, 
gray weather, and storms is approaching, the imprisonment of the snow, the 
bleak winter cold. The flowers are gone, the leaves are going ; frost is already 
upon us; the summer's sauntering is over, the moon-lit stroll, the sunset sail; 
the winds are keen and nipping, the ground is damp and sodden, and one 
might suppose it debatable whether it were best to keep alive or not, instead 
of rejoicing ourselves over the circumstance of life, as if, under such condi- 
tions, it were a boon worth the having. 

And yet such is the perversity of human nature that not when spring 
rustles all her promise of perfume and blossom, of warmth and ease and 
beauty, when the sap mounts and the blood bubbles and the year opens with 
renewal of youth's freshness, are we half so cheerful as when this red autumn 
hangs out his banners. We take no heed then of the future, and we forget 
that all the splendor of his array changes presently, like fairy money, to 
ashes. 

"Bright yellow, red, and orange, 
The leaves come down in hosts, 
The trees are Indian princes. 

But soon they'll turn to ghosts" — 

ghosts whose apparition does not give us an apprehension. The dazzling 
color is enough for us now ; and with the golden sunshine of the elms and 
beeches, the royal purple of the ash, the dull crimson and brown of the oak, 
the superb and scarlet flaming of maple and tupelo and sumac, the whole 
atmosphere is full of splendor, and we catch the spirit of jubilee — perhaps a 
battailous and triumphant jubilee — as we march out to conquer the coming 
hosts of winter. 

"Red leaves, trailing, 

Fall unfailing, 

Dropping, sailing, 
From the wood 

That, unpliant, 

Stands defiant. 

Like a giant 

Dropping blood. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 239 

Autumn Cheer. 

How much of this cheerfulness is due to the bracing- influence of the air, 
which is apt to work like iron in the veins, and how much to the effect of 
light and color upon the nerves, it is not quite easy to determine. By the 
bracing atmosphere of the sea-side or of the mountains, however, we are not 
always made particularly cheerful, but by that of the sunny fall days, other 
things being equal, the happy change seldom fails to be wrought, and we may 
proudly imagine in ourselves an unguessed and unconscious susceptibility to 
beauty that is able to work miracles and turn even dead leaves into the bril- 
liant jewels of the trees of the Arabian's garden. 

There is such an illumination present everywhere, such an airy splendor 
lifting the woods themselves, such a field of the cloth of gold set among all 
dead ferns and brakes and stubble, there is such a lofty soaring of the lighted 
sky above us and around, that the will of beauty must be wrought unaware 
upon the veriest dolt and clown among us. Far off, too, on the horizon such 
bazes brood, with their soft deep violet tints, now and then letting a sheet of 
sunlight through to sift upon the scene, leading into the unknown, and bor- 
rowing of the infinite, and giving a certain satisfaction in the view; for 
wherever any suggestion of the infinite is given, comfort is to be found by 
those mortals to whom the idea of mortality is heavy with gloom. 

Thus it is not impossible that out of the mere affairs of the fancy, the 
liues of leaf and sky and landscape, a positive happiness is wrought quite 
equal to the happiness usually given by what are reckoned more substantial 
things. It is well known that among the most cheerful sensations produced 
"by externals are those produced by the various degrees of red, especially the 
shades of cherry, carnation, and deep crimson. The coquette understands 
this as she knots a red ribbon in her hair, and the beauty, too, whose damask 
blush is her chief ornament; the crimson-carpeted room is the one which in- 
stantly reminds us of warmth and pleasure, and in which any great fall of 
spirits from a high temperature seems impossible ; it is the gray sea picture 
into which Turner thrusts the vermilion-colored buoy, and transforms it ; it 
is the russet-colored autumn that nature enlivens with the scarlet leaf. And 
yet these reds are the color of blood, the signal of battle, the exponent of 
slaughter and of fire ; and why a color that is the very flag of war, and the 
representative of cruel wounds and death, should give us pleasant and com- 
fortable sensations is only explicable by the supposition that in itself the rosy 
ray acts as a stimulant upon the nerves, exciting these comfortable sensations. 
There is, indeed, something rather flattering to our vanity in the belief that 
we are thus strongly affected by such aesthetic forces ; but if it is supposablt 



2 4 o STEPPING STONES TO -HAPPINESS. 

that the most of us have souls, the idea is neither very extraordinary nor fan- 
tastic. 

But quite apart from this merely intellectual or nervous action upon our 
batteries in this matter of the autumn cheer, is the much more earthly and 
solid content occasioned by the completion of harvest and harvesting, the 
knowledge that the round world over the laborer is reaping his reward, that 
the earth has again paid her dividend to the race, that nature has dene her 
duty and kept her promise, that the Great Guardian still sees that neither 
seed-time nor harvest fails in its season. Indeed, if the bursting of the leaf 
and flower makes one feel that God is alive in His world, then the ripening 
of the broad fields from east to west of the planet, the filling of the vast 
granaries, the gift of the year's food to man and beast, give one even firmer 
assurance that the great pulse is beating through the days and nights, and 
that the eternal life and the eternal love go hand in hand. What wonder, 
then, that, although we do not pause to consider it, the consciousness that 
we are so surrounded by the Divine care that no malice of the fierce elements 
can reach us should make us light-hearted enough to go forward gayly to 
meet the icy darts that winter slings, secure in our power of protection, and 
delighting to turn old Januarius from an enemy to a friend ? Who, indeed, 
can be anything but gay, unless there are some facts of actual care and sor- 
row and pain to supervene and strip away all the bright glamor from life, 
when the world around is so gay that nature seems to make holiday and to 
hold him a churl who refuses to join the revel — the revel where the noon sun 
hangs in an azure sky, and soft breezes curl, and resinous balms inform the 
air, and splendid colors set the scene? And then, as twilight hangs in the 
heaven, ready to fall, and a soft solemnity of that hour takes the place of 
jollity, it seems rather a sacrifice of praise and thanks, on whose altar has 
been shed the heart's blood of the year. And in that who is it, whether full 
of bliss or full of pain, that has no part ? 

Thus we see that, after all, there is nothing so singular in this autumn 
cheerfulness, and that, indeed, a contrary spirit would be the singular thing, 
while few follies could be greater, having this charming present, than to 
ignore it through feat of to-morrow, and that it is wisdom as well as pleasure 
to enjoy this bright day while it lasts, since 

tl before to-morrow's sun 

Cold winds may rise, and shrouding shadows dun 

Obscure the scene : yet shall these fading hues 

And fleeting forms their loveliness transfuse 

Into the mind, and memory shall burn 

The painting in on her enameled urn 

In undecaying colors." 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 241 

By the Hearth. 

And when the heavier chill does come, and the keen wind and cold dews 
announce the end of out-door freedom, with what lively pleasure do we light 
the first fire, whether it is for the many-colored flame of the driftwood fire at 
the shore, or the branches and cone of the wood-side place, or the sea-coal of 
the grate in the back parlor of the city house ! 

No one ever feels that summer is quite long enough, that it is quite time 
for it when the early dark draws down and cuts short the once long day ; and 
when the cool autumn dusk appears, most of us sympathize with those who 
speak of heaven under no other name than that of the Summer-Land. For 
whatever pleasures of its own there may be in the coming imprisonment of 
winter, they are still in strong measure, the pleasures of imprisonment, while 
summer, on the other hand, is one long freedom. One hardly tires of the 
large out-door life in its infinite variety, the going and coming at will, the 
liberty of costume, the abounding verdure and bloom, the unrestricted enjoy- 
ment of breeze and bird and stars ; of the warm nearness and friendliness of 
the moon in opposition to its wintry cold remoteness; of the water-life in 
skiffs and yachts, in the surf and on lily ponds — of all the prodigality of air 
and sunshine. And we do not wonder that in all the myriads of human be- 
ings no one has ever pictured heaven as any place of rugs and lamps and 
fires, or as anything but a land of everlasting summer. 

We make the most of winter; we are happy in it; we see an immensity 
of beauty in its vivid contrasts of sparkling snow and azure, its web-like trac- 
ery of bare boughs and purple sprays, its frost-ferns on. the frozen pane ; its 
ice blocks riven by restless tides, its white whirl of storms, and we think of 
the round earth then as a winged dazzle among the stars. But when we have 
admired our most, we can never make any idealization of it into a heavenly 
state, but the majority of us, on the contrary, agree with Dante' s ideas in 
making ice and snow and freezing blasts the inner circle and pivotal point of 
the last place of punishment. Yet for all that what a singular charm there is 
about the first fire of wood laid on the hearth, herald as it is of the cold im- 
prisonment, laid there not any more for its heat than for its necromantic 
power of dispelling gloom when the weather begins to shiver, and its depres- 
sion begins to overcome ourselves. How we welcome it, as if it were an old 
friend long gone and just returned!. How we gather about it, and rejoice in 
it! How late we linger about it, how we open our hearts over it, as if 
thoughts and feelings were thawed out by its genial spell! and how heedlessly 
we assist, as its sacrificial flames wallow up the chimney, at the funeral rites 
of summer! Still after all, that first fire, tumbling wave over wave up and 



242 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



out into the darkness, is the concentrated essence of the spice and sweetness 
of what countless summers! What years of sunshine and dew have gone to 
the growth of the wood whose embers crumble from the andirons as we bend 
over them! The spirit and being of how man}- mornings of brightness are 
condensed there in stem and branch, and of what moon-lighted evenings! 
what red sunrises have glistened in the dark dew that fed it! what bird-song 
has measured the rhythm of its increase! what gentle evening winds have 
swayed it ! what levers have leaned against it ! what storms have bowed and 
bent it! And as it burns before us and drops away into white ashes, what 
comprehension and memory of all this sparkle in every fresh burst of flame, 
in every dying coal, and diffuse themselves about us, and make that first 
little autumn fire for us the expression and ideal embodiment of perpetual 
summer. And yet greater is our delight when it is the first fire of all on 
our own hearth and in our own house. 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 243 



CHAPTER TENTH. 



The Light of the House. 

A mother is a mother still, 
The holiest thing alive. 

— Coleridge. 

Happy he 
With such a mother! Faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him. — Tennyson. 

His first love? Yes, I knew her very well — 

Yes, she was young and beautiful, like you; 
With cheeks rose-flushed, and lovely eyes that fell 

If people praised her overmuch, but true 

And fearless, flashing out as blue eyes can 
At any cruelty to beast or man. 

His first love? Oh, you do begin to see 

That he might love her dearly, and that yet 
"His manhood* s love to you might guerdon be, 

T'pon your woman's brow its coronet. 

Dear girl, accept the gift. There is no other 

First love so holy as she gained — his mother! 

— Margaret E. Sangster. 
Her children arise up and call her blessed. 

— Proverbs. 

Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. 

— E. A. Allen. 

What will not woman, gentle woman, dare 
When strong affection stirs her spirit up? 

— Southey. 

The light of love, the purity of grace, 
The mind, the music, breathing from her face, 
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, — 
And oh, the eye was in itself a soul! 

— Byron. 

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, 
And humble cares, and delicate fears, 
A heart the fountain of sweet tears 
And love and thought and joy. 

— Wordsworth. 



244 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Me, let the tender office long engage 
To rock the cradle of reposing age, 
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, 
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death ; 
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, 
And keep a while one parent from the sky. 

— Pope. 

Not a house as fine as Aladdin's palace will give us the stepping stone to 
happiness that we have expected it to be if it is not inhabited by certain fine 
and sweet spirits. And first of all these is the mother. It is one of the 
time-honored beliefs, old enough, those observers who have but a poor opinion 
of the modern society mother are saying, to have reached a foolish dotage, or old 
enough to know better, as you please — that there is no love like mother's love, 
as a modern poet phrases it; and it is true in so far as it implies that there 
ought to be no love like mother's love ; but as mothers are as fallible as wives and 
daughters and sisters, we too frequently meet specimens of them that make us 
think that if there is no love like mother's love, we are glad of it, and we 
should think that children would be, too. 



A Mother, 



Of course these observers are not intending to deny the great fact of 
maternal devotion, of the self-sacrifice that bares its own breast to protect its 
young, that dies for it if need be. But there are mothers and mothers, and 
whenever we see an inherently selfish woman we see also one who, if she is a 
mother, is of the sort that, if there is any dying to do, lets her children die for 
her. Although occasionally this mother is of the description that makes you 
wonder how she ever happened to be chosen to preside over a home, usually she 
is the tender and petted pretty woman, gentle and sweet and incapable, whose 
children ride over her, as the word goes, not because she loves them so that she 
can refuse them nothing, but because she loves herself too much to undertake 
the trouble of resistance, and without saying it herself exactly, her actions say 
for her that she would rather the children came to grief than that she should 
be obliged to make an exertion or forego a pleasure to prevent it. This is the 
mother who lies at home reading a novel while the nurse-girl, fresh to our 
fashions and full of her own interests, drags the baby out in crowded thorough- 
fares, often with its eyes in the sun, or just as often among horses' heels, with 
her own head turned the other way, and so busy with her gossips and flirtations 
that the child might be stolen under her hand and she know no more about it 
than the nurse of the child who replaced Pomona's baby did ; the mother who 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 245 

sits on the seaside piazza with her crewel- work and her friends while her child 
is in danger of drowning, or is off about her pleasure while the servant has her 
children sweltering in the neighbors' kitchens, and eating whatever they can 
lay their hands on. When, knowing their mothers' whereabouts and behavior, 
we see these neglected little beings, and find their pulses fevered, their diges- 
tion disordered, and their whole state just what it should not be, we say to our- 
selves that that mother's children ought to be taken away from her, and usually 
Providence seems of our way of thinking, and they are taken away. 

It is well for one's opinion of one's own race that there is another sort of 
mother in the world — mothers whose lives, unlike those of such cuckoo moth- 
ers, resemble more the lives of the domestic hens, lives which are one long act 
of maternity . It is fortunate that one can remember the self-forgetf ulness of 
one's own mother listen believingly to the story of the sacrifices of one's hus- 
band's mother, see daily the argus-eyed care of one's wife's mother, feel sure 
that no dumb creature ever excelled in watchful provision the efforts of one's 
friend's mother, remember the great mothers in history, and not suffer the 
selfish short-comings of this incapable and worse than worthless mother to 
outweigh them all. 



The Ideal Mother. 

There are mothers in the world who feel that they are responsible for the 
sprits called from the vasty deep and for the bodies that clothe them, who 
do not know how to rest unless every condition of health and safety has been 
fulfilled. They would scorn the suggestion of the shiftless mother who takes 
no pains because she may have no thanks, for to them the thanks are in the 
deed, the reward is in the doing; they would be wretched if they failed to do, 
and they are happy in their endeavor. What an amount of good is it that these 
mothers render the world ! To them more than to any other single and separate 
influence is due the health that follows the race up out of savagery, and attends 
it perhaps to unguessed development of strength ; and to them — their hands 
upheld doubtless as the prophet's were on the mountain, by the help they 
have — is largely due that improved moral excellence, to prove the reality of 
which, if casuists deny its existence, one needs only to point to the difference in 
public and private life between the mass of people in the nineteenth and that of 
the fifteenth, the thirteenth and the eleventh centuries, and as much farther back 
as undoubted history can take us. And if the development of the brain of the 
race is not directly due to these or any mothers, it is, at any rate, to their 
watchful help that it owes the opportunity of development. For of tener than 
any one else it is the mother who spells out the lessons with the child, even after 



246 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

it has escaped her tutelage, and is in the hands of masters, up betimes in the 
morning, and bending over the book in the evening. It is she who denies her- 
self the money, that the price of the education may be had, and the clothes for 
pride or for decency, if there is any denial to be done ; and she who by her own 
exertion spares the tired little student in everyway when studies and classes are 
over for the day; and it is she who fires the ambition and fans it with daily and 
hourly breath; and she who looks out for the play-time and pleasure between 
the tasks. Yet we would not take any credit from the fathers in allowing so 
much to these mothers who are mothers and fulfill their destiny. In the greater 
number of cases where there are such mothers there are fathers who encourage 
them by leaving no duty undone on their part, wise men who know how to 
choose wise women to wife, and whose exactions do not make life so hard to 
them as wives that they have no heart to do their work as mothers. These are 
the mothers whose love there is no other love to equal ; and it will never be 
from them, or from any like them, that radical disturbers of the peace 
w 7 ill talk of taking their children to be reared by the State , thinking that even 
the artificial mother, like the false incubator of the barn-yard family, is better 
than the mother who neither broods her young nor scratches for them. . ^ 

There is a great deal of sentimental cant, one must allow, in the com- 
mon talk about the beauty and glory of motherhood, but very little practical 
appreciation of that beauty and glory among the talkers, The accepted formu- 
las would lead one to believe that the whole thing was a mere exhibition and 
enjoyment of loveliness and tenderness, without responsibility, or work, or 
weariness ; without a moment of terror, or agony, or despair. Art has so far 
taken up the fancy and helped it forward that its perpetual presentation of the 
motherhood is either the blissful young being aureoled w T ith happiness, and 
holding her baby in her arms, or else the saintly old woman who, with her silver 
hair and serene smile, sits down for a placid breathing space at the end of her 
labors. 

But with the intermediate mother, the real mother, the mother of many 
cares, of constant effort, of daily and nightly anxieties, neither Art nor Poetry 
occupies itself ; and though her children may some day rise up and call her 
blessed, yet for long and weary years her virtue is its own reward. 

Indeed, there is little about her that is picturesque enough for the painter 
or the singer to use. The heavenly Madonna smiling from the canvas, all 
calmness and strength and joy, is available as the image of utter perfection in 
the idea; the daily drudge attending to prosaic duties and relieving ignoble 
wants, is not sufficiently gilded by the beauty of her self-denial and her love to 
give her the conditions th^t pen and pencil find desirable and requisite ; she is, 
in point of verity, too near and too commonplace for Art. For the young 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 247 

mother with her baby, the old mother with her accomplished life, have, so to 
speak, a sort of aerial perspective, as if the one were an object among the 
dreams of the future, the other among the memories of the past. The present 
is seldom poetic; it is only when leagues of blue and misty distance intervene 
that the hard, bare path we climb to-day becomes the vision of a beautiful and 
ideal ascent into heaven. 



The Every-Day Mother. 

And yet this artistic beauty is a merely superficial one. The true beauty 
lies with the commonplace mother — the mother who not once in ten thousand 
instances fails in the fulfillment 01 all that routine, so seldom estimated at its 
worth when performed, so surely bringing condemnation if in any iota 
neglected. The true beauty, we repeat, is with this mother who rises in the 
middle of the night to see if her children are covered ; who springs from warm 
and comfortable and needed rest at the hoarse breath or the restless toss; who 
lies awake plotting and planning, in these early years, how to get two articles 
of dress out of the cloth meant for one — in those later years, how to divine the 
bent of this child's genius, of that child's inclinations ; who perhaps kindles the 
fires, perhaps prepares the breakfast, certainly sees the children contentedly off 
to school; who toils and moils all day long, endeavoring to have the home what 
it is desirable it should be for husband and children ; measuring this way and 
that to make both ends meet ; never glancing aside at the enticing romance; 
forbidding her feet to follow the pleasant path to some neighbor's gossipy fire- 
side; denying herself sometimes necessaries in order that her children may have 
luxuries; foregoing social outside pleasure that the evening lamp may always 
be trimmed and burning, and the best-loved spirit of the bright fireside never 
wanting; bearing her pains and her sorrows with silent composure, that no 
thought of them may darken the young lives about her, and when all is done, 
and while all is doing, finding perfect recompense in the happiness afforded by 
the opportunity of the sacrifice and devotion. 

The compensation seems to come to every real mother in every moment. 
She forgets her suffering from the first in the joy of her possession ; and as the 
bird strips her breast of down to warm the nest for her young, so there is 
no self-abnegation that is too great for a mother to make, and none that does 
not bring with it a satisfying joy. 

" Wearie is the mither that has a stone wean, 
A wee stumpie stoussie that canna rin his lane, 
That has a battle aye wi' sleep before he'll close an ee — 
But a kiss frae aff his rosy lips gies strength anew to me /" 



24 ; 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




MOTHER S DEVOTION. 

It will only be when we understand, in gazing on the beautiful picture of 
the young mother, that she is so lovely because all this exertion and devotion 
and sacrifice are before her, in gazing at the old one, that she is so saintly be- 
cause trial and labor and love have refined her in their furnaces, that our talk 
about the beauty of maternity and the sacred name of mother will cease to be 
poetical'cant and become realized truth. 



The Story of Old Margaret and Her Boy. 

Let me tell you the story of Old Margaret, who was one of the self-for- 
getting mothers. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 249 

There are certain feminine instincts that assume in many eyes the charac- 
ter rather of virtues than of instincts, and the manifestation of which in any 
individual seems to touch all other women nearly. 

Among these instincts, so to call them, is that maternal one which causes 
the year-old baby to hold her mother's needle-book or roll of work on her little 
breast and hush it off to sleep, which causes her half a dozen years afterward 
to wake up in the night and see if her doll is warm enough, and which, a score 
of years later yet, knits a tie between herself and every tender little child she 
sees. A strange tie, without the immense joy of a mother's love — that joy 
which overflows the inner cells of the most desolate heart with vital warmth, 
which is fulfilled with satisfaction and with that ineffable yearning where earth 
touches close on heaven — a barren tie beside that divinely complete thing, and 
with more pain than pleasure in it. It is as if the bitter lot of women in this 
world caused them to feel the pathos of the fate of every child born into it, 
and gave them a pity that is all but love. '* Little butterfly in the cunshine 
and among the flowers, "it seems to say, " by-and-by night is coming, darkness 
and heavy dew and the night-hawk. If only I could protect you ! " 

Whenever I used to see a little bent old woman go by my window with a 
child in her arms, these and kindred thoughts would follow her. I did not know 
her name, and I could not see her face; but she interested me far more than 
the bright-cheeked and golded-haired young creatures that tripped by on their 
way from the finishing school. Her clean but utterly faded calico was so short 
that it showed the clumsy village-ties and drab stockings of her knobby and 
rheumatic feet; her shawl was a threadbare black blanket; her bonnet was a 
rusty poke; an alpaca apron was her only vanity; her poor old hands were bare 
and bony and misshapen, but they seemed to me fairer than any idle lady's in 
the land when I saw the way in which they clasped the child she held; the way 
in which, as she walked, she used to pause and lift the child higher, and lay the 
little face against her own, and step off again as if she were young and happy. 
Day by day I saw her pass. As the child grew, and sat up in her arms and 
looked about, she would straighten her bent form to bear him more erectly. 
Often she would kiss him rapturously as she went along, and she was always 
crooning some low tune to him, or talking a loving gibberish that he seemed to 
understand. Evidently the child had no mother, perhaps no father, either, 
for he was clothed in odds and ends; a great sacque and hood wrapped him for 
a long time, and when the spring came his head emerged with the short yellow 
curls crowned by a hat that seemed to delight him, so often he tore it off with 
his little hands to look at it, and set it on again awry, but which she must have 
rescued from an ash-barrel, and have scoured and trimmed with scraps of 
cambric from her rag bag. I longed to ask them in while they were slowly 




(250) 



SITTING AND PLAYING HIS BANJO. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 251 

going by ; but I have an uncomfortable reverence for reserves, and I fancied 
she was one of those who had rather suffer than be seen to suffer. But when 
the baby grew so heavy that she had to rest every little while, she sat down one 
day on my garden step, and then I opened the door to go out, and stopped and 
made friends with the child, and gave him a cup of milk and a cake, and began 
with her an acquaintance which if I do not in another life resume, it will be 
because I am not fit. 

Years and years ago old Margaret Ewins had been young; it seems as 
though no one could guess the fact were it not plainly stated, so gray and 
wrinkled and seamed was the face with which she looked up at you. "Years 
and years ago," she said once. "It's hard to believe it now when you see me, 
child ; but every wrinkle is a care, and every furrow is a tear. There were no- 
wrinkles nor furrows, no cares nor tears — it was all fresh and blooming — when 
I married Stephen." 

When she married Stephen ! That was full forty years ago. And thirty 
years he had been under the sod. Doubtless his image had grown dimmer 
than once, but he was still to her the fine and noble fellow that won her heart. 
She forgot that she was a withered crone, that he was a handful of dust; she 
set her love beside his inmortal youth, and looked forward to the end. 

Stephen had left her with an only child, born on the day he died. Other chil- 
dren had come and been laid away before, but this girl was last and the dearest 
of all. In her the father seemed to live and breathe again ; for her the mother 
lived indeed. She was a pretty thing as she grew into womanhood. Perhaps 
her mind was not altogether of the strongest; but one would have to be fastid- 
ious who paused to think of that in gazing at the red and white of her face, the 
clear blue of her great eyes, the gilding of her chestnut hair, her sweet and 
innocent mouth. Of course she had lovers, and of course there was a favored 
one — the least deserving of the whole, but the son of a family of vastly superior 
circumstances to her own. 

For poor Bessie's circumstances were those which belong to the children of 
poverty and labor the world over. Her mother owned the little house in which 
they lived, and the larger part of which they rented to others; and for the rest, 
they did sewing, nursing, clear-starching, whatever came to hand. But needy 
as they were, Bessie always had on a clean print dress, though she had to rise 
before day to wash and iron it; she always had a bright ribbon for her throat; 
she always looked as perfect as a rose. 

And old Margaret's pride and joy lay in seeing her so. She wore her own 
brown gingham till it fell apart, so that Bessie might have a bishop's lawn for 
summer Sundays. She pretended dire dyspepsias, and lived on crusts so that 
Bessie might keep her b'ood sweet and rich with the little milk and meat there 



252 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

was. Long after Bessie had come home from her moon-lit stroll with the hand- 
some and worthless James Falconer, Margaret sat over her needle or her Ital- 
ian irons abridging the morrow's work, that Bessie's pretty shoulders might 
learn no stoop, or else turning an extra penny, that she might surprise Bessie 
with the bit of trimming for which she had heard the girl longing. Poor Mar- 
garet ! she little knew the crop she sowed, nor recognized the tact that Bessie 
was becoming to herself as well as to her mother the chief person in the drama; 
she failed to see the springing and ripening selfishness in the girl, the wilful 
spirit, the deadly love of finery, the lack of reason. She only saw her standing 
in the light and looking at her with her father's eyes — those burning blue eyes 
that seemed at once to revel in the brilliance of the world and scorn it, too — and 
she felt that all she could have was not too much for her. 

Still as she glanced from the window sometimes, and saw her by moonbeam 
or star gleam leaning against the gate post, with James Falconer across the 
little wicket, as tall and dark and glittering as Lucifer, a misgiving would cross 
Margaret as to whether she was right in letting the thing go on ; as to whether 
it was possible for young Falconer to stoop from his ancient degree and his 
father's place to marry this clear-starcher. But then the child looked so bright 
and rosy and lovely as her mother gazed at her that she could but fold her 
hands above her beating heart and whisper to herself that all might be for the 
best, for stranger things than that had happened. 

But the years went slowly wearing by, each one of them taking a degree 
of Bessie's bloom with it, and Bessie was old enough to know better, and still 
James Falconer followed her and did not marry her, and other lovers had fallen 
away, and the mother, through some hidden sense, was half aware that Bessie's 
name was spoken lightly. And one day Falconer had disappeared, leaving a 
defalcation behind him, and Bessie had gone, too. 

No search was made for the defaulter ; a little of his father's wealth could 
repair the breach in the bank, and for his father's sake no suit was entered 
against him. Indeed, there were those who half excused him, and laid the 
blame on the shameless girl who had allured him, as they said, to his ruin. 
And certainly no search was made for Bessie. What could one feeble little old 
woman do ? Nothing in the world, nothing but pray — pray over seam and 
stove, by day and night! " What am I crying for? " she would say, dashing 
away her tears, " God is on my side, and with Him on my side, am I going 
to lose? No; Bessie will come back to me." 

And so for five years she toiled and moiled, not for herself, but that when 
Bessie came home there might be something laid by to let rest and comfort 
greet her. And every night she swept the hearth and brightened the lamp for 
her, and every morning she made the place spotless, thinking it might hold 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



2 53 



Bessie before night And her eyes longed and her heart ached and Her hands 
trembled to see her. Her expectation was always at fever heat. She hardly 
knew that the tears wet her pillow at night, such comfort was there in the 
thought that Bessie might come to-morrow, 

Five long, lonesome years! If old Margaret were sick, there was no one to 
soothe her, if she was cast down, there was no one to cheer her, But she 
clasped a sure faith; her hope brightened her days; and one night., as she had 
forefelt, Bessie came home, A weary woman got down from the stage, and 
tottered up the yard, and came in, and fell upon the floor, and in the night 
her boy was born, and in the morning consciousness seemed to come back an 
instant; for she looked up into her mother's face with those blue eyes and 
half smiled — Margaret always said it was a smile — and died, and all without 
one word ! without a word ! And if she could but have spoken — for there was 
no ring on her finger. 

Five long and lonesome years — and just for this! Poor Margaret had no 
tears. A fierce, dry anger with fate burned them away at their source Now, 
indeed, she was wretched. In those five years she saw she had been happy- 
happy with her hope. She took the child and cared for it mechanically; she 
laid it down between whiles as she went about her work, and suffered it to cry 
if it would. "Let it cry!" che said. "It's James Falconer's child, Crying's 
too good for it.'* But once as the little thing was sobbing, she went to it and 
saw the great tears shining in its blue eyes. "Ah, it is Bessie's child' " she 
cried. " I have been a cruel wretch ! '' and she caught it up and warmed it at 
her heart, and anger and grief went together, and thenceforth she was bound 
in the child. "I would have treated an outcast better,'' she sobbed at last 
"Ah, my poor little lad, with such a life before 
him !" 

And so she lived and strived, and had no other 
end in view than the well-being of little Steve, as 
she had named him. For him now she sat up at night, 




^254 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

as she had sat up for his mother; for him she denied herself as of old. That 
came natural enough. It seemed to her, she said to herself, as if she were 
doing still for Bessie. All she had laid by during the five years went in Bessie's 
burial. Anxious to have something beforehand again in case of her own illness, 
or in preparation for little Steve's future jacket and trousers, or schooling, she 
spared herself no pains. Her eyesight had failed so, what with years and what 
with tears, that she could no longer do fine sewing or starching. She was 
•obliged to go out to the rougher labor of the tub, and another old woman from 
the other part of the house — too old, indeed, for anything but to hinder the 
baby from rolling off the bed — used to come in and keep watch for her while 
her poor old arms were in the suds. But people hardly liked to employ her, 
not only because she could not see well, but because it seemed as if they had 
better be doing the work themselves than imposing it upon that gray-headed 
woman. Her proud, keen spirit felt that it was more in charity than anything 
else that she was hired at all. And she hailed the fact, as if a miracle had been 
wrought in her behalf when rents grew so dear in the town that she was at 
liberty to receive twenty-five dollars more a year on the other part of her little 
house, of which she now reserved but one room and a closet for herself, and so 
was allowed to leave the wash tub. 

Thus on one hundred dollars a year old Margaret lived and reared her child. 
It is that which seems the miracle to you ; but her wants were very few, and 
she was not uncomfortable. She asked no aid of any for little Steve — least 
of all of the Falconers, who never knew from her that such a child existed. 
Her bread and milk was all he wanted as yet, and he wore, as I have said, almost 
anything The Old Ladies' Society of the town gave her a monthly allowance 
of good Oolong tea, and she accepted it as a public benefit of the same nature 
as the streets to walk on , or the use of the corner pump, or the ringing of the 
nine-o'clock bell, to none of which she contributed tax money. And now, 
with nothing to do but to keep her two rooms and her two people clean, to 
teach little Steve his first steps and first words, she abandoned herself to her 
first real bliss in years, and when I was pitying her most she was needing it 
least. Her first real bliss, for not a fear disturbed it. " God takes care of 
the sparrows," she would say. " And he will take care of little Steve." 

" But when he is bigger," croaked the old grandam from the other part of 
the house, nearly as fond herself of the boy as Margaret was, though quite 
disapproving Margaret's devotion, "he will want different food from your 
bread and milk. He will need red meat, and where is he to get it ? " 

" Where the young lions get theirs," said Margaret, and went on joyously; 
and it was in the days that I first saw her, taking her morning and her afternoon 
walk with the child in her arms, talking gayly to him all the time, and kissing 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 255 

him at every other step. What visions she had of little Steve's future, and 
how she used to confide them to the child as they went ! And the boy would 
lift his little head and pat her cheek approvingly, as if he understood them all, 
and give her now and then a great wet kiss of his rosy mouth in return — 
a kiss that knew no difference between her shriveled vellow cheek and 
the blushing velvet of youth. 

How, after her hard experience of life Margaret could have had such a thing 
as a vision passes conjecture; but she was so light-hearted in her love that she 
believed in everything that another might have seen to be impossible and 
unattainable. The clothes which little Steve was to wear when he went to 
school; the errands he was to run in order to get the money to buy the clothes; 
the school to which he was to go — no common school at all, but one where her 
care of the rooms was to balance his term bill; the prizes he was to win; the 
day he was to graduate and speak his piece, and be applauded by the people 
and be mentioned in the Morniiig Herald next day; the apprenticeship he was 
to serve in a lawyer's office; the cases he was some day to plead; the lives he 
then was to save ; the good, the glory ; and by-and-by President — what a daz- 
zling structure that she built up on the foundation of her little span of life and 
strength ! And meanwhile, as she waited for the time when all these things 
should be accomplishing, she took her pleasure in her boy. 

Perhaps Bessie's babyhood had been as lovely, her tongue as apt, her feel- 
ings as quick, as little Steve's were now; but Margaret had had no time then 
to enjoy any of it all — now she had nothing else to do. It seemed to her that 
110 cherub slumbering in beds of amaranth and asphodel inside the sculptured 
.gates of heaveu could be so beautiful as little Steve was with the dew of sleep 
upon him as he lay on the old patchwork quilt. The day that the boy laughed 
heartily and intelligently she felt that she had assisted at a fresh creation of the 
human soul, and to her mind nothing more remarkable in the record of the race 
had ever occurred than the first articulate sound that little Steve uttered. His 
recognition of herself was an ever-recurring miracle ; she snatched him up each 
time and covered him with kisses, as if it needed a special act of gratitude ; the 
detestable old cat from whose back he pulled a handful of hair became a sacred 
being — she wondered that the cat did not like it; he was welcome to as many 
handfuls of her gray hair as he would take ! " Do not talk about this earth's 
being a dark place ! " she cried, to the old grandam of the other part of the 
house, ' 4 for it seems to me as bright as the sun itself! It must be bright 
when all the children that are born meet it with such a gay heart. I used to 
pity them all. But now — look at him ! he smiles at everybody, all the world are 
friends —it is beautiful ! The angels must feel just so. Oh, you don't think, 
do you, that he is too bright and good to live ? Oh, my darling ! " she would 




(256) 



PRACTICING FOR A LONG MIGRATION. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



257 



cry, that single gleam of trouble bringing back the one dark thought of her life, 
" if I only knew that you had a right to the name you bear ! " 

And so the days passed on, each one a festival, each new one bringing a 
new feat of little Steve's to be shown and admired and praised, the child thrived 
and prospered, and more and more with each day the little old woman seemed 
to become a child with him. They used often now to come in and see me. I 
had the children's deserted toys for little Steve, that delighted him, and there 
were others which could not be taken away, such as the great music box, and 
the aquarium, and the fernery, over which he hung spell-bound, and I had cer- 
tain innocent dainties whose whereabouts he early learned to know ; and when 
he twisted his little- lips into coaxing kisses on the air between, his grandmother, 
proud as she was, could not resist the child's insistence to be brought across the 
street to me. 

The sight of age is always a pathetic sight to the young and strong, 
especially of age forgetting its miseries and the near grave in the love of 
others ; but there was something exquisitely pathetic in the sight of this little 
old creature lugging the heavy child about, none the less so for her uncon- 
sciousness of it. Once, when she saw a shadow of the thought on my face, 
" Don't you pity me,' 5 she cried; " I am too happy for that ! Keep your pity 
for the old women that are not grandmothers ! " 

" You set too much by the boy, Margaret," said the grandam, who had 
walked out with her that morning. '' What if he should be taken from you ? " 

" What if he should be taken from me ? '* she repeated, opening her sunken 
eyes as if they had never seen the possibility before. " Well, then, I should go, 
too! It couldn't be for long. But no, no; he is as stout and healthy as he is 
bright and handsome. I only pray not to be taken myself till he can spare me !" 

Poor old Margaret! It was well for her that she enjoyed herself while the 
sun shone, for the darkness was coming soon enough, 

One day, just as little Steve came out of his bath, and, running away from 
her, was toddling about the room, his little body shining with water-drops, his 
curls dripping in wet, bright rings, there was heard a man's foot on the step 
and in the entry, a rap on the door, and the visitor had come in unbidden and 
stood before her. 

It was James Falconer. 

" I have come for my boy," said he. 

Margaret, risen to fetch the child, staggered and fell back upon her seat, 
and caught little Steve and clutched him closely. She trembled from head to 
foot; but she glared at her enemy like a lioness defending her whelp. 

"I suppose you do not deny that he is my child?" said the visitor no 
longer the dark and handsome youth, but a worn and haggard man* 



*5» 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



" He is his mother's child/' said Margaret hoarsely; tc and so mine. There 
was no ring on Bessie's finger ! " 

Falconer paused a moment and gazed at the boy; and the boy, full of 
roguish glee and kindliness, looked archly up at him, and kissed the air after 
the pretty fashion that he had. " Yes, he is Bessie's boy fast enough," said 
the man. 4< And he is mine, too, you will have to understand. And I have 
come to get him !*' 

''Go away, James Falconer!" cried Margaret, "or I will set the law on 
you IV 

"There is no law to set on me," he said — " there is no law for me, except 
the law that gives a man his child, born in honest wedlock." 

Margaret blanched as she heard him. Her heart rose and sank, and sent 
a pulse over her in hot waves. To clear Bessie's name from stain \ But at such 
a price I Was it — was it possible? She looked at the vanishing ambro-type that, 
framed in its wreath of dead roses, hung beneath the clock — the bright, beau- 
tiful face with the smile. 

/' Was he." she whispered presently — "was he born so ? Was my Bessie 
a lawful wife ?*' He nodded. " Do you swear to it, James Falconer ? Will 
you publish it in the Morning Herald*. " She ran and brought her Bible, over 
which she had sat so many a night spelling out the big type that promised 
blessings to the widow and the fatherless. She held it out at arm's length. 
v l Kiss the book 1 " she exclaimed, iv and swear it all." James Falconer bent 
his head and kissed the book. ' 4 Then you can take the boy," she said. " But 

take him quickly, before it breaks my heart !" And the man went his 

way with his own. " O, Bessie, Bessie," she cried, as the door closed and left 
her all alone, ' v you bright and careless girl, what an awful price have I paid 

for your good name ! I have sold my little 
Steve, his hopes, his future, his life and soul, 
to that man — to that man and to evil." 

That night the old grandam fumbled at 
Margaret's latch to come in, according to her 
custom, for a social gossip in the twilight — 
Margaret did not answer her. She opened the 
door and saw her lying on the bed. 

Ck I've had a stroke !" was all that Mar- 
garet said, as the other old woman bent over 

her — Cv I've had a stroke " 

1 k God bless me ! The palsy ! We'll have 

the doctor here" 

* l Oh, no, it's not that," murmured Mar* 



^#^ 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



2 59 




Wfj 



garet, slowly. " But just the heart is dead within 
me." 

The next day the poor soul did not attempt to 
rise. She lay there with the Morning Herald \ in 
which at last was printed the day and date of 
Bessie's marriage, nearly seven years ago, spread 
out upon the pillow, as if in little Steve's place. 
To them that would have ministered to her she 
seemed in a stupor till she lifted her eyes, as wild 
and suffering as those of a dumb creature in mor- 
tal pain. She did not listen to what anybody said; ): r - ■ " vCA V ~- > ^ 
she did not speak herself; she tasted the nour- ' " »"* 
ishment that was brought and turned away — the 

tide of life was ebbing out, and she was letting go her hold upon the earth that 
had grown worthless to her. She lay in that half dream, and whether we came 
in or out she neither knew nor cared. Once only she spoke — sighed rather 
than spoke. "That is right," she said. "Punish me! punish me well for ever 
having dared to doubt my Bessie!" 

But Sunday morning, just as the great first flush of the dawn came into the 
room, and all the air rippled with the tumultuous music of the birds, Margaret 
sat up in bed, and looked at the morning star sinking back into the rose and 
glory. It cast the shadow of the window sash in a long dark cross upon her 
bed. She glanced at the shadow and faintly smiled — the brighter light would 
soon efface the shadow, soon she would lay her cross aside ! And the cross 
paled and faded, and was gone; and then, as a child's voice somewhere in the 
distance sweetly and shrilly joined the chorus of the birds, she shivered and 
her head fell forward and dropped upon her breast — and the dawn came slowly 
and softly up and shed a silver splendor round the poor old head, and showed 
us that Margaret had passed into the fuller day. 




2 6o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER ELEVENTH, 



A Weil-Spring of Joy. 

God's child, with His dew 
On thy gracious gold hair. — Browning. 

The merry merry lark was up and singing, 
And the hare was out and feeding on the lea, 

And the merry merry bells below were ringing, 
When my child's laugh rang through me. 

— Charles Kingsley 

Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them. 

— Psalms 

So build we up the being that we are. 

— Wordsworth. 

A mither bairn who had never known 

Aught save the tenderest care, 
She had fared to the heavenly land alone, 

As the souls of all must fare. 

, — Margaret E. Sangster. 

The children gather the table round, 

And this is rosy and that is fair, 
No dearer group in the land is found, 

With their laughing eyes and their golden hair. 

— Margaret E. Sangster* 

Among these latter busts we count by scores, 

Half emperors, and quarter emperors, 

Each in his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest, 

Doric and low-browed Gorgon on his breast; 

One loves a baby face with violets there, 

Violets instead of laurel in the hair, 

As those were all the little locks could bear. 

— Browning. 

But one house will be only half peopled if there conies there no new life 
in the little child to carry on and enlarge the old. 

When the first whisper comes to the young mother's heart which calls to 
her, "Blessed art thou among women," which tells her that the strength of 






STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 261 

her love has kindled a new being, it is not of the great gulf of death that she 
must cross to win her treasure that most she thinks, but of the field of her past 
years, and of the influences that have made her what she is for good or ill. 

"There are two moments in a diver's life: 
One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge, 
One, when a prince he rises with his pearl," 

she may perchance repeat, but not until she rises with her pearl from the 
black depths into which she plunged more bravely than any man ever went 
to battle, not until that most awful of all moments when she has felt the pres- 
ence of the Lord of Life beside her, not until that sweetest of all moments 
when the little face lies near her own, when her tired arms clasp that which 
yesterday w T as not and to-day is, does she penetrate the secret and burden of 
those past years to its full meaning, and in the cup of her joy find a bitter 
tang, the sting of her own sins and errors, the effect of which the silent work 
of nature has passed over to her child, and made him in great degree that 
which she has made herself. Every mother knows something of the bitter- 
ness of this regret, unless she be immeasurably centered in the sphere of her 
own self-conceit ; and from the instant of the experience her life is bent 
toward undoing any evil the child may have inherited from her or from an- 
other, and toward bringing all good influences to bear in developing his being 
symmetrically and in making him a blessing to his race, something lovely in 
the Eternal eyes, it may be, something worthy of the full receipt of that life 
which is love. She may be the sternest disbeliever in religious doctrine and 
dogma, finding no satisfaction to reason in the substance of any creed, but in 
this moment a sterner doubt will possess her : the doubt if this little spirit 
can be anything less than immortal; and she finds herself proceeding on that 
supposition, and, in the peradventure, doing her best to give him a good start 
in immortality. When those die w T hom, living, we adored, it seems blasphemy 
to them to doubt of their continued existence ; when those are born of our 
love, as we know that love is everlasting we are assured that they partake of 
the nature of that which gave them existence. 

As the mother lies quiescent in the long days, in the still watches of the 
night, more often than otherwise her mind is busy with the great verities ; 
she is rehearsing the child's future for him; she is weighing and judging his 
possibilities; she is thinking how this one fault that is his father's may be 
brought to naught in him, those noble qualities be brought to light, how those 
boundless faults that are her own may be exterminated or rendered abortive, 
how the moral and spiritual inheritances from his ancestry may be handled, 
how best shall be developed this last flower of the race. She sees that growth 



262 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

is the unfolding of life; that there is in it something- of the divine; that it 
must not be hindered ; and that possibly all she may be able to do is to keep 
off injurious influence. 

If she never prayed before, she prays now ; if she never suffered before, 
she suffers now; if she was never glad before, she is glad now; glad with a 
sweet awe that she and the Eternal Powers of goodness are to work together 
in making this child worthy not only of his mortal, but also of his immortal, 
parentage. 

The Baby. 

The helpless morsel of humanity and flannel that has come into the house 
and has presently through his imperious necessities turned it upside down 
and made all its people slaves, is not three days old before he has found out 
who is master. When this little immortal being yells, he yells with all the 
force of his immortality behind him ; the household prostrates itself as if be- 
fore the vast outside agencies of the unknown. A kitten might squeal, a 
puppy howl ; we would relieve it ; but it would not be that matter of vital 
concern and effort that the relief of the baby becomes ; and although we are 
not conscious of it, it is not our sense of selfish possession that prostrates us 
so much as our consciousness of this new being's identity, with the first grop- 
ing of his hands, the first wandering of his eyes, and of his being the latest 
manifestation of this vast unknown, the finest and last result of a long line 
of generation, the crown of our own existences, the thing we love as a part of 
ourselves, and perhaps as a part of heaven, too. 

Be that as it may, the little child has not learned to focus his eyesight, 
when, lying on his face across his nurse's knee, he may be seen to lift his 
head and survey his surroundings. In that survey he has made up his mind 
about many things and evolved the germ of his self-will. The problem that 
presents itself is not to break that will but to direct it ; never to awake it in 
contradiction to the superior will, never to let the child know the need of 
screaming or insisting, or the possibility of any gratification following such 
screaming or insisting, to let him find that, strong as his will may be, the 
superior will is stronger, and it is profitless to resist it ; that there is to be no 
yielding or changing after refusal or command, no playing fast or loose, but 
wise determination in the first and a firm hold of that determination after- 
ward, no matter under what pressure of the child's wish or of a personal de- 
sire to the contrary. And with that the child is led to see that neither one 
will nor the other is of any use in contest with the facts of the universe, that 
fire will burn, that water will drown, that blows will hurt, and that there 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



263 



must be accommodation to 
the truth, and he will have 
taken then his first conscious 
step into the world outside his 
own narrow periphery, the 
world of law. 

If one asked the young 
mother what was her first 
duty, she would reply that it 
was to establish habits of 
health in her child. Undoubt- 
edly she is right. But if she 
has fed her child at such regu- 
lar intervals that he has never 
had to exercise lungs, stom- 
ach, or temper in demanding 
food; if she has put him to 
sleep alone so early that he 
has never known any other 
way, and has never had to 
have his nerves rasped or his 
terrors excited by the unac- 
customed fact, then she has 
already established some 
habits of physical health, even 
while attending at the same 

time and in a small way to matters of the higher nature. Of course it is a 
self-evident fact that no thoroughly harmonious nature can be expanded from 
an unsound body; and that the work calculated to achieve or to maintain 
the sound body must be coincident with other work, and must be unremit- 
ting. 




WHAT A SINGULAR CHARM THERE IS ABOUT 
THE FIRST FIRE OF WOOD ! 



The Physical Care of the Baby. 

It is almost presumptuous to say to the mother that her child must be 
watched from the first, in order that it may be known how well or how ill his 
food agrees with him; that if he is obliged to resort to artificial food it must 
be prepared with the greatest care and cleanliness, with no long tubes and 
coils in his drinking-vessels to nourish the deadly ptomaines, and that the 



264 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

child must never be allowed to become so hungry as to gulp down greedily 
more than can be disposed of healthfully instead of such amount as the 
stomach can handle with slow and gentle satisfaction. 

Constant care is the price of everything valued in this world, and the 
bodily habits must be made a matter of close observation, and if in any way 
they fail, the physician must be summoned and obeyed. 

That the child must be kept dry, that chafing must be prevented by the 
use ot home-made unguents pleasantly scented, or of finely sifted starch 
rather than of the possibly dangerous and highly perfumed powders to be 
bought, that a few drops of oil, a soft sponge and soap and water must be 
relied on to cleanse his head, that his hands and feet must be always warm, 
that the sleep must not be made restless by too much clothing, creating a 
heat that weakens, all these again are so self-evident facts that one feels like 
apologizing for mentioning them. 

The mother herself must judge whether the child, if puny and delicate, 
shall sleep alone or have the warmth of her arms; her mother-wit will tell her 
that he must be handled as little as love can allow, must be fondled and 
breathed over no more than is indispensable, must be excused from promis- 
cuous kissing from all sorts of lips, must not have his brain excited by too 
many faces, too much talking, too much going and coming about him. This 
same mother-wit, too, will abolish the long picturesque skirts loaded with 
finery that bear and deform the baby's legs and feet, and will shorten all 
skirts at the first moment in which the growth of the baby and the tempera- 
ture of the weather act together, and will, moreover, cover the neck and arms, 
so lovely to look at and to kiss, with high-throated and long-sleeved slips, if 
indeed it does not keep the baby in little night-dresses for many weeks rather 
than in embroideries, laces, and ruffles. Mother-wit, too, will make the bath 
in tepid water a daily habit and joy from the first ; in the early days, wash- 
ing and wiping and covering a little surface at a time, and the full plunge 
bath when the little bather is able to splash the water with glee and compre- 
hension ; but even then the child will not be left in the water long enough to 
become blue or to receive the least chill. 

Much of all this is such intuitive knowledge that many mothers may consider 
even the suggestion an impertinence. Nevertheless, the mother who follows 
these hints, whether naturally or otherwise, and further sees to it that her 
house, her drinking water, and the drinking water of her cow, as well as all 
her own habits, are healthy, will be rewarded with the possession of such rosy 
wholesomeness, such beaming intelligence as only a thoroughly comfortable 
baby can show, and with such joy as only the possession of such a treasure 
can give a yearning and a tender heart. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 265 

The Moral Growth of the Child. 

From the healthy animal being made sure, by circumspection and solici- 
tude, we may hope to see the healthy mental and moral being evolved. Men- 
tal and moral being will be evolved in some way, since that is an affair in- 
cident to all in the process of the opening out of that integral germ of in- 
dividuality which belongs to each child as much as the development of seed 
and flower belongs to the plant. Out ot its own mysterious sources will come 
the unfolding of the sturdy oak from the acorn, of the butterfly from the 
worm, of the storm -sweeping eagle from the egg, of the sage, the hero, the 
Saviour, from the first feeble morsel of humanity. But the determination of 
that unfolding, of the quality and direction of that mental and moral being, 
are very lovely in the power of the child's environment, and thus in that of 
his mother and father. Resting in this germ of individuality, it has been 
widely proved, lie many of the capacities of generations of ancestors, although 
certainly not all of those capacities ; for some have been annihilated by inter- 
marriage with contradictory and stronger ones, some have been atrophied by 
disuse. Those remain by re-inforcement and accretion either from the re- 
mote or recent past, while others are dormant but not yet withered, and capa- 
ble under re-animating circumstances of being brought into use whether for 
good or evil. We see in almost every family some one person in whom have 
survived the traits of those dead and gone this many a year, traits long ago 
dropped by all the rest of the connection. The careful parent will not allow 
the possibilities these thoughts suggest to be forgotten ; and in this view, 
knowledge concerning one's lineage is always to be desired. If among these 
dormant capacities there are any of value, it is the parent's part to vivify 
them, to stimulate and strengthen them in action, and if there are any noxious 
ones, to use every endeavor still further to asphyxiate and destroy them. 

This recurrence of traits is seen so surely in the physical life that we 
might know the natural corollary of it all is in the moral. In certain house- 
holds a peculiarity of the eyes will re-appear from time to time till it is known 
as the family eye, and it will be seen in old portraits, where they exist, for 
ten generations back. Where there has been a hunch-back, it is tolerably 
sure that somewhere in succeeding generations there will be another; it will 
be thought and declared then to be the result of accident, but investigation 
will probably discover the congenital weak spine in some shape all along the 
line, and knowledge of the liability will tend to make us overcome the cast in 
the eye and strengthen the weakness of the back. The same thing is familiar 
to us in the moral world ; certain families are known to be of jealous and vin- 
dictive natures ; certain ones to have parsimonious qualities; of these one is 



266 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

as sure of their benevolence as of their name; in others a scholarly habit has 
existed since they were known as a family at all. 

Thus the work of the guardians of the child is plainly set before them ; 
to repress here, to forward there, to increase existing power, to nullify wrong 
tendencies. It looks like a vast task; but when it is remembered that it 
means but a word at a time, day after day, one recalls the discontented pen- 
dulum, and is not so much appalled. The carrot, some one tells us, has to 
have twenty generations of culture before it is edible ; but, en the other hand, 
let it be left alone for five generations and it is again worthless. 

Still, although so gradual, this task of directing the child's growth is an 
unceasing one ; for going along at the same time with the destruction of evil 
inheritances and the stimulation of good ones, there is usually also the im 
planting of other distinct and positive characteristics as they are seen to be 
necessary. It ought not to be a difficult one, however; for some of the de- 
sired traits are but the revival of those originated or taught by our earliest 
Aryan fathers, courage, truth, and worship, and much of it is done in letting 
our children see the noble qualities in our own lives and conduct. There is a 
sort of creative happiness in the work, meantime. We have seen a young 
mother who experienced deadly fear in a thunder storm, her heart sinking 
with every flash, hold her little child up to look at the lightning with smiles 
on her face, as if nothing were more to be admired than the blue and rosy 
splendor of the flash, and lift her finger the while inclining her head to listen, 
as if the reverberations of the thunder, the house shaking with the concussion, 
were music in her ears, because she was determined the child should not be 
the heir of the tremors and sufferings of others. It may have been an ordeal 
to her, but it would have been a worse ordeal to have her son a coward ; and 
she was but repeating the lesson the first Aryan mother taught her son far 
away in the abyss of past ages, and she has a joy in doing it that more than 
compensated her, for she was creating a hero. 

Deny the existence of original sin, as we may, the survival and appear- 
ance of these ancestral traits, whether rudimentary or full-flowered, which we 
shall constantly see in our children, if we look for them, amount in practical 
dealing to the same thing. Selfishness, fear, falsehood, cruelty, sensuality, 
will be the ghosts coming to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon, vastly 
modified, it is to be hoped, but still the same as in the mother of all the 
Jukes, and some one of them probably to be contended with by any one who 
has the care of the last inheritor of all the virtues and vices gone before, the 
last heir of all the ages, the child of any household. Yet it is not to be for- 
gotten that good has been inherited with the evil, the good of all the strug- 
gles against temptation, the effort toward the better and higher, the refusal 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 267 

to surrender to sin, till that effort, that struggle, that refusal, till, in short, 
virtue becomes an hereditament. Hence to stultify the evil, to foster the 
good, is the burden that the parents take up with their first-born's first breath. 
It is a burden they have no right to lay down for a day. They are responsi- 
ble for the child's existence, and so for what he does with his existence. It 
was they who called these spirits from the vasty deep ; it is they who must 
lead them as Solomon led the genii in a leash. 

When a child commits its first theft of apple, or cake, or what-not, the mother 
may well feel a horrible fear of the apparition of the original cave-dwelling 
savage, of the foraging marauder, the highwayman, the thieving borderer, 
the vassal or serf who attended the high-handed raider who knew no other 
law than that of might. When the child strikes its first angry blow, she sees 
all that old original savage rising in him. ' 'Opy the door!" cried a two-year- 
old child. "When I say 'opy the door,' opy the door!" And the mother 
knew that the time had come for her to obey tremblingly or to resist to the 
death the domineering spirit that had never been laid to rest with bell, book, 
or candle, capable of ruining the peace of a family to come as it might have 
ruined the peace of those dead and gone. "You said I would feel better when 
I had given away some of my caramels," said another little re-embodied trait. 
"I don't feel any better. When shall I begin to feel better?" And this 
mother saw something appalling as any old family ghosts, the old miserly 
spirit of one strain of his ancestry rising to contest, not with the desire for a 
peaceful conscience, but with the spirit that loves luxury and ease so much 
that it never does right, but only with the slothful dislike of the consequences 
of wrong ; and while others smiled at the naivet of the urchin she saw a 
problem before her as intricate as one in the calculus of imaginaries. Per- 
haps it would help her to remember that one of the fairy fancies of science 
has been that owing to the thinner and lighter atmosphere of the planet Mars, 
the birds got the start there, in the matter of evolution, making the intelli- 
gent being of . Mars, the human being there, a winged creature. It is her 
art to make his moral atmosphere that which shall develop the winged being 
in her child's nature. 



Help in the Problem from the Great Educator. 

In the solution of the mother's problem as to the right way to develop 
the minds of her children many great minds have come to her assistance; but 
none of them more practically than Pestalozzi, Rousseau, and Froebel, the 
latter with a patient working out of system that was creative. , It is Froebel's 



2 68 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




ROCK ME TO SLEEP, MOTHER. 



ideas that now 
govern nearly- 
all primary edu- 
cation, even 
where his whole 
plan of teaching 
is not carried 
out. The inten- 
tion of his work 
is to evoke a 
universal and 
all-round devel- 
opment of the 
nature and the 
faculties, and 
this is done by- 
turning the nat- 
ural activities 
of the child to 
use, by develop- 
ing the body 
through gentle 
and rhythmical 
gymnastics, and 
the soul through 
the simultane- 
ous action of 
the senses and 
of the social 
sympathies and 
instincts. 



Froebel 



It is by the 
slow process of 
many years that the excellence of Froebel's ideas has been proved, and the 
process was accompanied by ridicule and obstruction till it triumphed. But 
the wonderful man had stanch adherents and powerful friends in his life-time. 
When some one spoke of him as an old fool, a learned professor replied that 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 269 

Socrates was that sort of fool ; when he died, his grave was filled with flowers 
by children whose lives he had developed as those flowers had themselves been 
developed from wildlings. 

His work beginning with one school — a school of whose pupils Prof. Fichte, 
the son of the great philosopher, declared that they showed exceptional in- 
telligence in the Universities and elsewhere — is now the compulsory system 
of Austria and of several other European countries, and is on the way to be 
widely adopted in the United States, very notably in the schools of Boston — 
an interesting fact because it was toward us that Froebel looked for welcome. 

Among prominent people who have interested themselves in the work is 
the Empress Frederick, who had her children reared according to its plan, 
and who is the patroness of certain institutions in London, where Robert 
Owen introduced it ; and the Princess Pauline of Lippe-Detmold, and the 
Duchess Helene of Orleans have made use of it, in forms somewhat modified 
for the very young and the very poor. It is even used among those having 
most success in the schools for the blind, and it is undoubtedly to become the 
one and only method of educing and training the intelligence of children 
the world over. "The most delicate, the most difficult and the most impor- 
tant part of the training of children," writes the Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow, 
in quoting Froebel, "consists in the development of their inner and higher 
life of feeling and of soul, from which springs all that is highest and holiest 
in the life of men and of mankind ; in short, the religious life, the life that is 
at one with God in feeling, in thought, and in action. When and where does 
this life begin ? It is as with the seeds in spring; they remain long hidden 
under the earth before they become outwardly visible. It is as with the stars 
of heaven, w T hich astronomers tell us have shone for ages in space ere their 
light has fallen on our eyes. We know not, then, when and where this relig- 
ious development, this process of re-union with God, first begins in the 
child. If we are over-hasty with our care and attention the result will be the 
same as with the seedling which is exposed too early and too directly to the 
sun's heat or to the moisture of rain. If, on the other hand, we are behind- 
hand, the consequences will be equally fatal. What then must education do ? 
It must proceed as gently and gradually as possible, and in this respect, as 
with all other kinds of development, work first only through general influ- 
ences. As the child's physical condition is healthily or injuriously affected 
by the badness or goodness of the air which it breathes, so will the religious 
atmosphere by which it is surrounded determine its religious development. *' 

Music, gesture, expression, love, are the first agencies which Froebei 
would use in his work ; and in taking advantage of the intimate communication 
between the mother and the child, he would have all the mother's moods fine, 



2 7 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

and in the school those of the young teacher or kindergartner, the mother for 
the moment, because the child shares these moods. And while he makes the 
kindergarten a miniature world for the child, he makes its system a school fcr 
mothers. Indeed a school for mothers has been established on this basis and 
with this name in Prussia, and it is much to be wished that we might have 
the same thing here. Something of the sort, to be sure, has been attempted, 
but one class of mothers had no time from their work, and the other class 
from their play, and nothing has as yet resulted. 

In the modern system of training children the work begins at the earliest 
moment; for as there is no moment too early for the implanting of evil, it is 
to be counteracted and prevented at the outset. "A tender young leaf pricked 
in the spring-time with the finest needle will show a scar of continually in- 
creasing size, till it withers in the fall. " If one were to condense the system 
to a few words, one would merely repeat Froebel's own intention of satisfying 
the child's demands as much as possible, of being wisely indulgent, and of 
allowing the child, so far as consistent with safety, to learn by experience. 
By this means when the child attains his seventh year and leaves the kinder- 
garten, character has been expanded, habits of discipline, obedience, exacti- 
tude, niceness, and unselfishness have been formed, the will has been trained 
through the exploitation of wise motives and reflection on the result of action, 
the intellect and the emotions have been exercised, while all the social in- 
stincts have been fed and strengthened to demand yet more food, instincts 
that are our joy, and, so far as much of the happiness of this life is concerned, 
are almost our salvation. And in the mean time the child has learned some- 
thing of his relation to inorganic nature, to nature even in the iron in his 
blood, the chalk in his bones, to human nature, and, it is claimed, to God, and 
to God in nature. 

At seven years the child has attained one-half his stature, one-third his 
weight, and his brain, save in exceptional instances, is as large as it is going 
to be. But although the brain has attained its size, it has not made much 
progress toward differentiation ; its structural development is still very em- 
bryonic, but has been given tendency and direction, for, in the words of an 
authority, "all brain activity reacts on the particular structure engaged, modi- 
fying it in some unknown way, and bringing about a subsequent physiological 
disposition to act in a similar manner, " establishing thus a habit, perhaps a 
faculty, as a gardener establishes a new variety. It is during this plastic 
period before the seventh year that Froebel puts in his work — the period that 
used to be thought of small account, in which the child was dealt with as a 
little animal, or not much more, and in which he has been, until lately, left to 
the care of nurses and ignorant servants, where there were nurses and ser- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 271 

vants to be had, and left to run wild where there were not. To deal with this 
period now, all the intelligence, learning, moral culture, and civilized graces, 
are not thought too much ; and the work may be done in the preliminary 
school, or it may be done in the home nursery. 



The Kindergarten, 

All the methods of the kindergarten work are the result of the most ex- 
quisite study and elaboration. They go so far as to analyze the character of 
the child's pleasure, in the game of bo-peep, for instance — the willing surren- 
der of the sight of the mother's face for the sake of the fresh joy of seeing it 
again ; and in the later game of hide-and-seek, they show that the hiding is 
for the instinctive delight of being found, and that in carrying this play too 
far, or in leaving the child unsatisfied by expressions of pleasure at the find- 
ing, there is danger of letting the interest degenerate from the social and 
unselfish pleasure into the love of hiding for its own sake and so into love of 
concealment, into slyness and deceit. How many years ago is it that Plutarch 
said that children should be taught to avoid all that savors of secrecy, which 
tends to lead them away from uprightness and to accustom them to wrong! 

It is through the child's play that all this study of his nature and effort 
to meet his necessities proceeds. For play is the expression of the child's 
nature, it is the way in which he attacks life, in which he reproduces his ex- 
periences, classifies his tendencies, and exhibits his inmost being and all its 
outreaching. In this play the child act's over again all that he has seen and 
would fain comprehend, and in this play he individualizes the inner spark 
which is himself and which is to be the agent of good or evil in him. One of 
Froebel's chief interests was in seeing the progression of the whole race from 
its savage days in the pla} r of the child. "He draws a parallel, "says Miss 
Blow, "between the child's love for running and wrestling, and for all games 
of physical prowess, and that first stage of human society when all men were 
hunters, warriors and athletes. He connects the child's love for digging in 
the ground with that agricultural instinct which transformed nomadic tribes 
into nations of husbandmen. He shows us the germ of rights and prosperity 
in the boy's love of ownership, opens our eyes to see in mud pies a faint 
straggle of the plastic instinct, persuades us to hear in the rhythmic cooing of 
the baby a prophecy of music, and bids us reverence the dawn of science in 
the eager habit of investigation. But he lingers most lovingly of all over 
those manifestations which reveal essential human connections, and never 
t^res of following the soul as it struggles from darkness into light." 

As it has already been said, the very beginning of Froebel's system lies 



272 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINE-SS. 

in his deep intimacy with the hearts of mothers, his knowledge of them, and 
fellowship with them. 

He has for the mother almost a divine tenderness; he educates her while 
he shows her how to make her child a symmetrical and a spiritual being. 

As the kindergarten is the next step from the mother's arms, it is con- 
tinued in the mother's spirit; and as the smile is the first expression of love 
between mother and child, in the spirit of that smile is a subsequent training 
to be given and received. In the kindergarten book of nursery songs and 
games, with every song for the child there is a motto for the mother, to show 
her the feeling in which the little game would best be played or the song 
sung. Froebel went about among the people studying mothers and babies ; 
and it would seem as if he had caught and preserved every emotion of the 
little being in its first taking hold of life, and he taught mothers what their 
own natural play with their babies meant, and how it might be made yet more 
effectual. In this way motherhood is formulated into a science, but all so 
naturally that one sees, as it were, an apotheosis of pure family life in every 
household where these ideas are adopted and their leading followed, that of 
"father, mother, child, of light and love and life." It is through the mother 
that the child reaches that self-knowledge which is also self-reverence and 
self-control ; it is through her instant sympathy that his instinctive activity 
compasses all culture ; it is through the mother that the world of self, of 
others, of all the outside universe is first reached by the child ; but it is all 
under a process not of forcing but of self-development. 

Love is to call out faith, needs are to demand fulfillment, as in the in- 
stance given by one of his exponents, of the little child who being abused by 
her nurse, and wishing to complain to her mother, who was absent, exclaimed 
desperately, "Father in Heaven tell her!" and uttered her first cry for spirit- 
ual help that way. "Can you tell, O Mother," Froebel asks, "when the spirit- 
ual development of your child begins? Can you trace the boundary line 
which separates the conscious from the unconscious soul? In God's world, 
just because it is God's world, the law of all things is continuity — there are 
and can be no abrupt beginnings, no rude transitions, no to-day which is not 
based upon yesterday. The distant stars were shining long before their rays 
reached our earth. The seed germinates in darkness, and is growing long 
before we can see its growth. So in the depths of the infant soul a process 
goes on which is hidden from our eyes, yet upon which hangs more than we 
can dream of good or evil, happiness or misery." 

In raising mothers to this height, it is recognized, even if unconsciously, 
that until now the race has "received its stamp from the male half only," and 
in teaching mothers how to turn even their instincts to account in educating 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 273 

theit children, a new era is opening, in which the children of the race will 
have the benefit intellectually of mothers as well as fathers in a way they 
have not known before, and which must be enlarging and elevating and en- 
nobling, In this light it is not so much matter whether mothers talk baby- 
talk to their children or not; indeed Rousseau says that words are of almost 
no consequence in the early months, and that accent is all-important. It is 
the harsh sentence, the sharp emphasis, the unmusical tone that must not be 
given by the mother. It is quick and absolute sympathy that should be 
shown by her: lor as Froebel says, ''The whole after life of the human being, 
with all its deep significance, passes in dim, shadowy presentiments through 
the child's soul But the child himself does not understand the importance of 
these presentiments, these dim strivings and forebodings, and they are seldom 
noticed or attended to by the grown-up people who surround him. What a 
change there would be in all the conditions of life, of children, of young 
people, of humanity in general, if only these warning voices were listened for 
and encouraged in early childhood and apprehended in youth in their highest 
meaning, '* It is because the mother guides and governs intuitively that she 
is peculiarly fitted to translate and to illumine these intuitions, intimations, or 
presentiments^ and if she is the mother that she should be, to glorify them, 
and demonstrate the inner meaning of the universe through the experience 
of love. 

It being to the mother, then, that Froebel gives his first assistance, it is 
out of her caresses and endeavors at entertainment that he builds up his sys- 
tem in a logical sequence of games that are satisfying, delighting, and de- 
veloping to the child, adding little more, only enlarging and illumining the 
old. The child's first movements are made contributory to certain expansive 
gymnastic exercises, especially those for the hand, the most valued member 
of the body — the weathercock being the name of one of the earliest games, 
since, after light, the child osberves motion, which is life, and by holding the 
hand out flat with the thumb erected, a weathercock is imitated, and by the 
movement from north to south, from east to west, the connecting muscles of 
the wrist are brought into action, the action being accompanied by a little 
song which arouses a spark of thought The next step is to make the child 
look for the wind, the invisible force behind. In another game the fingers 
represent father and mother, brother and sister, and the children are named 
and counted and put to bed. Another game is called the sun-bird, and con- 
sists of the vain attempt to catch the reflection of the sunbeam flashed to and 
fro by means of a piece of glass. "The child thus learns at an early age that 
it is not only material possession that gives pleasure, that beauty has the 
power to penetrate to the soul and to produce greater happiness than mere 




(^74) 



SHE SPELLS OUT THE LESSON WITH HER CHILD. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



275 



enjoyment of the senses can afford. " With this the little household pets and 
animals, pigeons, chickens, cats, whether real or imaginary, are to be called 
around, exciting observation and friendship, and tempting the child's desire 
for further knowledge. He is taught family-life by means of a nest of birds; 
in one hand-game he rounds his hands into the likeness of a nest, and he is 
taught then that every little bird is taken care of in a special way, how it 
builds its nest, where it is safe from danger and where the food it requires is 
within reach, and that it builds this nest and hatches its young ones at the 
time of year when the unfledged little creatures will be protected by the 
warmth of the spring sun. And then the mother drawing the child's atten- 
tion to the fearlessness with which the little birds lie quietly in their nest, 
waiting for the return of their mother who has gone to fetch them food, re- 
peats these words : 

"The heavenly Father's glorious sun 

Warms thy home, too. and makes it bright, 
He shines on thee and every one — 

Look up, and thank Him for His light!" 

There is another hand-game, called the watering-pot, in which the child 
is taught the pleasure of doing for others, in imitating the action of giving 
water to the flowers, while his intelligence is awakened to the fact that all 
things require care. The child thus is taught, first, love for the father and 
mother, then for mankind, and then for the Infinite. He discovers for him- 
self that he is "the child of nature, the child of humanity, and the child of 
God," even although he does not put his discovery into words; he is led to 
perceive later, and his parents are led to perceive with him, that the laws of 
the mind and the laws of the universe are the same ; and those parents, in 
beholding the soul grope for and grasp the organs of the body, and use their 
hitherto unspiritualized substance, so far from doubting the existence of the 
immortal part of their child, will, under the light that Froebel gives, see it 
blossom and unfold before their eyes. 

It is now evident that the office of education is that of assisting and guid- 
ing natural development, that the beginning gives a bias to all the rest, that 
the spiritual and the physical go on together, that the child's intuitions furnish 
a natural basis, and by using the physical wants we reach the spiritual, the 
senses being the slaves of the soul, the will, and the intellect, that instinctive 
notice is to be led into conscious action, that as only through physical im- 
pressions is the soul awakened, so those impressions should be the object of 
care, and not be left to chance, and that, as the last springs from the first, 
the process by education is to be continuous. Thus it will be seen the simple 




(2 7 6) 



BEAUTY AND GLORY OF MOTHERHOOD, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 27.7 

gymnastics for the hand, advised dv Froebel, contain the seed and essence of 
all later instruction. 

That the comprehension and practice of this require a good deal of study 
on the part of the mother is not to be denied, but it is simple, so gradual, that 
it is not to be feared, and it is all the time accompanied by the unfolding and 
perfecting of the flower of being in the dearest and tenderest thing on earth. 



The Gifts in Froebers System. 

Froebel wisely begins by recognizing play as the absolute business of a 
child's life; and he utilizes the fact by leading play unawares into work and 
the business of the maturer life. He accomplishes this largely by the intelli- 
gent use of certain toys that he calls his "gifts," wholesome to handle, not 
easily injured, thus repressing the destructive tendency; toys of lovely sug- 
gestion, and most of them not so complete in themselves that they cannot 
afford the opportunity of doing something more with them. They can be 
used illustratively in later periods than that for which they were first given ; 
and they are chosen to teach form, color, and distinctive qualities like weight 
and size, to teach also the love of law and the comprehension of unity in the 
each and all of the universe, each set of "gifts" preparing the way for the 
next. These objects, and the brief drill accompanying them, teach obedience, 
promptness, industry, facility, arouse imagination, quicken originality, and 
strengthen the body. In order that they shall be intelligently and faithfully 
employed, an educated and grown-up teacher is necessary, the child having 
left his mother's arms; and it is thought best that no class shall number more 
than fifteen children. 

The first gift, which, indeed, belongs to early babyhood, consists of six 
woolen balls, three of the primary and three of the secondary colors, "the six 
children of light in the rainbow, the symbol of highest peace." These afford 
the child the means of judging of form, of color, of direction, up and down, 
to right and left, each ball having a string so as to be under control, afford 
exercise, and lead to the second gift. With any one of these balls begins the 
application of the law of contrasts, the first contrast lying in the object as 
one opposed to or outside of the child's self or identity, and afterward coming 
that of the varying colors, that of one or many of rest or motion, of the latter 
in straight lines or curves, given in tossing, or belonging to it in rebounding. 
Then, too, it is seen that the ball is always the same, equal in all directions, 
is a representation of all concentered force; it gives the child's first impres- 
sion its own roundness and completeness. 



27S STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

The second gift is a wooden ball, and with it a cube and a cylinder. 
The ball carries on the lessons of the first gift ; it represents motion and life, 
the cube, rest and inertia; the cylinder combines both; standing, it has in- 
ertia, rolling it has life. 

"Thus the three appear as representatives of the vague essence of the 
three kingdoms of nature; in the cube, life sleeps as in the mineral kingdom, 
and the cube moves only when placed on edge or corner, to return again to 
sleep; in the cylinder, the type of the vegetable kingdom, axial life in certain 
directions begins to manifest itself; and in the ball, as in the animal king- 
dom, all-sided life, life in all directions is reached. Again, the second gift 
presents types of the principal phases of human development; from the easy 
mobility of infancy and childhood — the ball — we pass through the half-steady 
stages of boyhood and girlhood, represented in the cylinder, to the firm char- 
acter of manhood and womanhood for which the cube furnishes the formula. ,% 

By revolving the cube, we find a cylinder; by revolving the cylinder, a 
sphere; by which we learn, "not only that each member of the second gift 
contains each and all of the others, but that whatever is in the universe is in 
every individual part of it; that even the meanest holds the elements of the 
noblest ; that the highest life is even in what in short-sighted conceit we 
call death. And when, on the other hand, we revolve the sphere, and see 
that, try as we may, it will ever remain the same, we learn that all-sided ani- 
mal life is, indeed, the highest manifestation of existence, that death means 
decay, and that only all-sided development can keep us from this." 

The third gift, or the child's joy, as it is called, is a larger cube, cut so 
as to divide into eight equal cubes. This makes a step in development ; for 
hitherto all has been whole, indivisible, and complete, all impressions have 
come as units, and now analysis and synthesis begin, of course in the sim- 
plest forms, and the most easily to be digested and assimilated, that of taking 
apart and putting together, of dividing, changing, and joining, of using will 
and inventive faculty, all in the exercise of the first glad activity, and all un- 
der that control which the shape and nature of the small cubes make inevit- 
able, so that destructiveness and rude vandalism are impossible ; and in the 
mean time number is taught by this, and the idea of the fraction. The child 
cannot re-create the toy he has shattered ; but let the big cube be broken, 
and, "Oh, wonder and joy! each of its parts resembles the whole, the original; 
he has not destroyed, he has not killed his own joy, he has more, more or the 
same delightful playthings. . . . And, behold, when they are put to- 
gether again — when the synthesis is made — what a wealth of new forms, what 
a store of new playthings grow as by charm out of the parts. . . . All the 
while, the child is gaining and fixing new cognitions ; new relations of posi- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 2^ 

tion, direction, shape, number, motion, life; acquiring ever fuller and clearer 
control of language, ever greater, higher, manual skill, bringing ever more 
unity into his thoughts, feelings, and expressions. Can we fail to see," adds 
Mr. Hailmann, from whom these sentences on the soul of Froebel's gifts are 
quoted, " that with such playthings, judiciously presented and managed by a 
mother whose wisdom is equal to her love, the child's instinct for activity, 
his awakening consciousness of power, grow, not in the direction of destruct- 
iveness and cruelty — but toward skill, to imitate, to reproduce, to invent/' 
The fourth gift is again a cube made of smaller oblong blocks. The fifth 
gift, another cube made of twenty-seven smaller ones, introduces the oblique 
line, aids in the study of angles, and later in the comprehension of square and 
cubic measures. The sixth gift is another cube of twenty-seven oblongs, 
designed to help in building and in arranging symmetrically. All these im- 
press upon the child the principles of unity and universality in their like and 
unlikeness. These six gifts are the most important ; but all the others are 
of untold value in their various uses. 

With the seventh gift come what are called tablets, slices of wood or of 
thick cardboard, from which the element of thickness is withdrawn so that 
only the element of surface is left, with which the child constructs representa- 
tions or flat pictures or what he may, and the use of which is thought to mark 
an important point of his mental growth. The eighth gift is of slender 
wooden sticks of various lengths and tints, for making rude objects prepara- 
tory to drawing, the shapes of the letters of the alphabet, for interlacing into 
spaces for the multiplication table, for acquiring perception of length apart 
from breadth and thickness, and for similar uses. The ninth gift is of half 
and whole wire rings, for instruction in curves, leading to elementary science, 
to botany, astronomy, and geography. The tenth gift is of slates and papers 
netted in squares, by means of which both drawing and proportion are taught, 
and later the drawing of maps ''in the net" is thus made exceedingly easy. 
The eleventh gift is paper and cards to be perforated, a needle with a handle, 
and a pad to lay beneath in this elementary form of drawing. The twelfth 
gift is made of perforated cards, and silks, and needles for simple embroidery. 
The thirteenth is of papers folded and cut in many ways that produce inter- 
esting designs and afford the delighted child the lawful opportunity to use 
scissors, thus turning his mischievous propensities into charming interplay of 
fancy. The fourteenth gift is strips of colored paper to be woven together 
in any pattern, wonderfully exciting to the inventive powers. The fifteenth 
is of hard wood slats which are to be interlaced into all sorts of figures. The 
sixteenth is of slender slats joined together, representing innumerable com- 
binations of angles. The seventeenth is of colored paper strips, eight or ten 



280 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

inches long, to be folded lengthwise and bent into shape, according to rules 
given with them. The eighteenth is again of paper in squares, triangles, 
and circles, out of w 7 hich many other objects are formed. The nineteenth is 
of pointed wires, corks, and peas — the ends of the wires to be united in the 
corks, or in the peas soaked and softened, and so erected into skeleton de- 
signs. The twentieth gift is of potter's clay, with a modeling board and 
tools. 

Of all these gifts, perhaps none are made more useful than the last ; for 
it can be made to take the place of almost all the others. Of clay, the child 
delightedly can create the ball, the cylinder, and later on express his percep- 
tion of all other objects, and even can approach the threshold of art, although 
all unaware and as unconscious as Raphael's two cherubs that overlook the bat- 
tlements of heaven. And in the modeling, a use. of the hands has been ac- 
quired hardly to be had in any other way, an acquaintance with natural 
objects and laws, and an opportunity for the expansion into ideal artistic life 
for those in whom the artistic nature predominates. We are told that "the 
moral effect of this occupation is special, the yielding nature of the clay seems 
to develop conscious power, to prophesy the dominion over material nature 
commanded in the morning-hymn of creation that begins the Bible; while 
the indestructibility reveals the inexorableness of law ; truths which are op- 
posite but not contradictory. " 

The uses of all these gifts can be grouped into exercises with solids, with 
planes, with lines, with points ; and with their employment comes a series of 
physical games, such as the drill, singing, ball-throwing, a change from 
manual to vocal work, and the rest to be found in calling upon other organs 
and muscles. 



School Another World. 

That school is important for the evolution of the social nature is appar- 
ent. "He who learns to swim must go in the water" ; he who is to be happy 
or useful in the world must mingle w T ith his fellows ; and so in his first social 
experience the child should have a society as near perfection as it can be 
made, a society of the innocent, a society where personal liberty is supreme, 
where each has all his rights and chances and no interference from another. 
"Such a society does all it can to aid each member in the attainment of his 
individual ends, while he, in return, finds his highest aims in common pur- 
poses ; such a society thanks the child cordially for his successful activity, and 
he gratefully acknowledges as his greatest triumphs those in whose attain- 
ment he played only a part ; such a society enjoys the result even of his in- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 281 

dividual activity with full, unfeigned pleasure, and he again soon learns to 
seek his greatest joy in the joy of others, his highest ideals in the welfare of 
the whole. ... In the kindergarten Froebel would provide a pedagogic 
society which answers to these requirements. Here the child finds a number 
of others of similar age, as nearly his equals in power, capacity, and scope as 
individuality will permit; a number of social elements with whom he can 
fully sympathize, and who sympathize fully with him in all manifestations 
of growing life, among whom he finds nothing inexplicable, unattainable, un- 
enjoyable ; playmates, associates, fellow-beings in embryo, with whom he can 
assimilate, coalesce organically without giving up his self. Here the child 
becomes familiar with the high value of union with others. Heretofore, self 
was the main center of his desires; now he begins to find aims beyond self; 
the germs of love, of devotion, of a widening humanity swell in his soul and 
burst into life ; he is aroused to a consciousness of his worth as a part of the 
whole." 

At school, then, it is evident the child is stimulated by others, pleased 
with companionship, and all his social instincts — that is, his relations to his 
kind — are developed at the same time with the rest of his better nature. Here 
the mental work, or sport if you please, is for fifteen minutes, and then the 
physical game, the song, the dance, the pretty play, is taken up for change 
and relief for as long a time. The child sees that it is a privilege to join the 
game, and that it is punishment to be unemployed. 

In building with the blocks, the natural destructive element is restrained 
by the obligation of taking down instead of knocking down any and every 
structure, and of putting things away in place. The learning of the alpha- 
bet, which was once a dreary effort of memory, becomes a pleasure when the 
letters are fashioned with the sticks of the eighth gift ; the first group of the 
letter I, and the figure 1, being made of the single stick, the next of X, V, 
L, by two sticks, and so on. 

Among the effects of this system of preparatory education, at the end of 
which the child is found to know thoroughly much that used to be taught 
through that wearisome memorizing which makes the world a desert for the 
time, are many purely moral gains. Thus the child has been given, first, per- 
ception of absolute truth and of reverence for the fixed laws of the universe 
in the mere handling of his blocks, and, later, love for his little fellow-mortals, 
and the spirit of true democracy. 

The old system of mnemonics may have its value, the mechanical and 
the ingenious systems, such as that artificial way by which we of an older 
growth were taught to remember, for instance, the year of the death of Charle- 
magne, 814, because the figure 8 resembles the hour-glass, the symbol of war; 



282 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the figure 4 a ploughshare, the symbol of peace. But here all the child's 
knowledge is firsthand knowledge, that has come out of his own experience, 
and is thus a part of himself and not to be forgotten. And with all the rest 
of his moral gain he has learned that self-control which calls into exercise 
those among the higher brain-centers. 

All his toys, while they have taught him inductive reasoning, have been 
archetypes of nature ; in the ball he has the earth and stars, the ideal of per. 
fection in shape and motion ; in the cylinder he has growth in trees and in 
animals, and further along he finds there the foundation of pottery; in the 
cube he has the mineral kingdom, crystallization, and by and by architecture; 
he himself in any childish experiment of play may see salt crystallize into 
cubes, and alum into octahedrons ; everywhere he has been led upward in the 
way in which only geometry and geometrical forms lead ; and all without a 
text-book he has been made mastei of much that text-books give. 



In Visiting a Kindergarten. 

One can find by personal observation the value of the Froebel system 
much more exactly than it can be comprehended by reading. If one visits a 
kindergarten watches the children building any object with their blocks, 
each one alone, and each one individualizing his work ; hears the teacher tell 
them all a story concerning that object afterward, helping them by the details 
of the story to see if they have done their work correctly; listens to them then 
singing the song appropriate to the exercise; if one watches them unite and 
contribute to build a village, learning the while a new lesson of association; 
or if one only follows them in their playtime, one will still observe that with 
every chance for individual effort there is always the joy of united effort, of 
co-ordination without subordination, all in an atmosphere of joyous love and 
sympathy. 

"Do you not see," asks Hailmann, "the gentle, steady ml pulse for 
growth, the abundance of food for development, which each and every in- 
dividuality gains from this intercourse with nature ? Do you not see that the 
full and respectful consideration, which the little society awards to true merit 
in every direction, teaches these little artists, discoverers, inventors, thinkers, 
to feel and to appreciate? . . . Do you not see that it is not in the 
power of a single home, no matter how great its wealth, material and mental, 
to supply the mighty influence for all-sided growth, individual as well as 
social, which is wielded by the free and full appreciation ot individual worth 
and the just and moderate demands upon individual powers on the part of a 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 283 

society of equals ? And do you not feel that it would be a crime to keep the 
growing- human being from this influence, when his nature calls for it? Do 
you not feel that it would be sin to let it be exerted without proper guidance?" 

Physically, morally, intellectually, and artistically the methods of the 
Froebel system, it must be seen, we think, are those which will soonest lift 
the child to those levels from which the great, perfect race to come shall take 
its departure. 

When children emerge from the kindergarten their whole being is in a 
condition which renders them susceptible to the loftiest sort of instruction. 
Their faculties and their conscience are all alert, and they are ready to take 
hold of the great world of knowledge after the technical fashion and make it 
their own. Much yet remains that they may be taught experimentally, as, 
for example, in the woods the growth of trees, on the shore the structure of 
shell and sponge and seaweed, in the open country the movement of stars 
and planets. "What shall be attempted," asked Mrs. Hopkins, one of the 
supervisors of the Boston schools, "for the child who comes from the kinder- 
garten all ready to learn, but as yet unacquainted with books? I answer, all, 
and more than all, that may be found in elementary treatises in every de- 
partment of natural science may be given him in object-lessons, in a compara- 
tively short time, with what is of vastly more importance — an enthusiastic 
love for these studies, a habit of careful observation, and a training of the 
senses which shall be a great addition to his power in science, art, or practical 
life. He may at the same time lay up in his memory the ground facts of 
written and spoken language and mathematics. Then, by natural stages, he 
will turn with avidity to records of the observations of others, until a concep- 
tion of arrangement, generalization, and inference will grow up within him, 
the dawn of a higher epoch in the harmonious education of the mind." 

Mrs. Hopkins goes on to tell of a year's work with a class of children 
some ten years of age, in which for history they studied that of the United 
States with Mr. Higginson's text-book and the help of the pictures in Loss- 
ing's Field-books and Catlin's North American Indians; Dickens' Child's 
History of England, with an examination of many illustrative prints ; and a 
good portion of Greek and Roman mythology. With this, they studied also 
the geography of the United States, drew maps, made imaginary journeys, 
and traded products of the different portions of the country till they were 
tolerably familiar with the whole of it. Instead of a drill in grammar, they 
were shown that they already knew grammar in an elementary way and could 
parse simple sentences ; while they had exercises in dictation and composi- 
tion with constant reading and spelling and recitations of poetry. In arith- 
metic they mastered fractions, decimals, compound numbers, and the metric 



284 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

system, having treated all these subjects as variations of the rules of numera- 
tion, addition, and subtraction. In botany they analyzed flowers, learned 
the properties of tendrils, the propagation of the orchid, the multiplication of 
cells, studied forest trees, a first book in zoology, besides reading several ele- 
mentary books on natural science, and making drawings of birds, all as if a 
new world were opening to them, and with delighted and eager apprehension 
They drew, under a special teacher, learned to talk simple French with a 
native teacher, could play a French game, and in German could read Grimm's 
Tales. In all of this, learning seemed to be simply a delight. 

For example, says Mrs. Hopkins, in that invaluable little book for mothers 
and teachers, 'How Shall My Child Be Taught?" "One day last spring, to 
reward those who had braved the storm to come, I took a dry account from a 
compendium of general history, and attempted to teach in an hour or two the 
lesson of the Crusades. The children had had but a glimpse of the matter, 
in connection with their lessons in English history, the previous year. Read- 
ing to them in some such way as I have described (that is, interrupted with 
questions and answers and brief conversations, using the skeleton of the book, 
and making, as it were, an impromptu translation of the text), writing on the 
board a schedule of names and dates as they occurred in the reading, in order 
to make the outline clear before their eyes; tracing the localities and move- 
ments on the map; reading verbatim passages from 'The Talisman,' also 
showing with it the engravings from a rare illustrated edition of Scott, and 
with pictures and a little of the text from 'Ivanhoe, ' I found at the close of 
the session that, in the glow of the whole theme upon the clear mirror of their 
minds, they had received a comprehensive as well as a particular knowledge 
of the subject, a perfectly orderly outline of its facts, a vivid apprehension of 
its purpose, philosophy, connections, and results, as well as a strong scenic 
impression of the drama of the whole epoch." 

But not only the method of study, but the matter given in the desultory 
reading of the child is a subject demanding serious consideration. This is no 
new idea ; for, more than two thousand years ago, Plato said, in substance, 
that we must be scrupulous about the stories our children have ; in them there 
must be nothing derogatory to the dignity of the gods ; they must not mislead 
by false statement ; they must not present the characters of the great in an 
"unworthy light ; they must inculcate courage and self-control ; and they must 
be written in a simple style. 

We see now how much depends upon the teacher, and how vital it is that 
the mind which imparts should be full and strong and replete with overflow- 
ing thoughts, and how unfortunate it is if resort to books and statistics and 
dry repetition itself is found necessary. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 285 

We are in the habit of thinking that the teacher of the advanced classes 
of later years has the higher rank ; but when we more fully understand the 
office of the teacher of these early years, see that a whole generation is clay in 
her hands, that her work "covers the most impressible period of life, it de- 
mands the most earnest enthusiasm, the clearest wisdom, and the most varied 
experience in one who undertakes it; in particular it requires intense sym- 
pathy with children in their tastes, in their outlook and ways of thinking, as 
well as in the singleness of their moral nature; it requires, moreover, a capa- 
city of child-likeness which is the attribute only, of harmonious maturity or 
of genius. 

"It is the unspeakable gift to become as' little children . . Sympa- 

thy — not indifference, antagonism, or hostility — should be the medium of the 
teacher's influence. Desire for the pupil's advancement will awaken desire in 
him for that end, courage arouse courage, determination evoke determina- 
tion; joy in the teacher's heart will communicate its stimulus and lead to vic- 
tory, enthusiasm will kindle enthusiasm and create a vital atmosphere in 
which the child's being expands almost unconsciously. Intelligence should 
precede memory ; imagination should accompany recollection ; nature never 
set a child to learn by rote ; those things which must finally be subjected to 
an act of memory should be approached as a discovery, as the symbol of 
ideas. Respect for the common-sense of mankind, faith in its formulated ex- 
periences will grow out of an intelligent attention to results of thought and 
conduct, will be accepted as guides for action." 

A famous instructor some years ago, who said that he spent his days 
leading jackasses up Parnassus, would not be of much use to-day in this view 
of his duty and this exemplification of his love for his work. Another re- 
quirement of the teacher in the modern treatment of children is the ability to 
exalt and increase the strength of the will. "A culture of the will is a neces- 
sity of right culture for body, mind, and soul," continues Mrs. Hopkins in 
the wise and wonderful pages from which extracts have been given here. "It 
must be remembered that the fundamental law of growth by exercise is as 
applicable to the will as to any other power of man or nature. The will must 
be kept active in the child by leading him to determine and work for himself. 
If he is driven blindly to the accomplishment of the task set for him, he will 
never develop the power to set tasks for himself and put himself to work, 
which is his only chance for real achievement of either power or result. Give 
motive and stimulus sufficient to arouse the will until it commands the facul- 
ties successfully. It is immediate, clear, and decisive action which best 
defines the mental and moral ideas, executes theii purposes, and evolves the 
wili-power. Children should not be advised when they are competent to ad- 




(286) 



HELPLESS MORSEL OF HUMANITY. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 287 

vise themselves, but thrown upon their own resources for determination of 
aim and means as far as possible." 



John Wesley's Mother. 

The mother of John Wesley would have disagreed with this, for she once 
declared that the first thing to be done is to conquer the will, and while the 
improvement of the understanding is a work of time, the subjection of the 
will is something to be done at once, and the sooner the better. But if Mrs. 
Wesley were unwise here, she had some regulations in relation to her children 
that were worthy of remembrance. It had been observed in her family, she 
wrote, that cowardice and fear of punishment often led children to lie until 
the act became habitual ; she therefore made laws that whoever confessed 
his fault should not be whipped, that no child should be punished twice for 
the same fault, or upbraided for it again ; that every instance of obedience 
or self-denial should be praised or rewarded ; and that good intentions should 
be respected. Certainly by these rules, or in spite of them, Mrs. Wesley had 
a measure of success with her children. There are some things in the old 
methods, it would seem, as useful and as good as anything in the new. But, 
on the whole, the old methods treated a child as if he were a piece of mechan- 
ism ; the new methods treat him as if he were a living, growing, and unfold- 
ing soul. The old methods attend upon that which he knows; the new 
methods upon that which he is, regarding chiefly that most marvelous of all 
the phenomena of life, the capacity for growth, and seeking to bring about an 
intellectual and spiritual transubstantiation of the facts of the universe. By 
this new method, if we had not alreadv a soul, we should develop one. 



Slojd. 

Perhaps as potent a factor as any other in the new methods of rearing 
children is the adoption of technical instruction or manual training, in the 
manner commonly known as slojd. Experts are still discussing whether we 
shall leave dead languages and go forward to that which is new, and whether 
the moods and declensions and analyses of grammar shall deaden and stultify 
the nervous centers much longer, whether arithmetic shall be simplified and 
much of it abbreviated and passed over to algebra, whether we shall leave the 
old wasteful ways, wasteful as regards life, time, and intelligence ; but they 
are beginning to be of one mind as to slojd. No such advance in mentality 
can be imagined as that god-like one which demands that the child shall not 



i f 

1/ r- J * 




(288) 



THE CHILD WILL HAVE A LOVE OF WORK, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 289 

only observe and describe an object, but that he shall cieate it. The handling 
of cools, the manufacture of articles, however trilling, begets a habit of men- 
tal precision, of concentration, of clarity, of truth, that is precious; it breaks 
up brain-destroying monotony, gives relief from sedentary occupation, and 
vitalizes the effect and result of study. The ethical influence, too, of this 
manual training is immense; the child will have a love of work, w T ill have ac- 
quired dexterity, patience, perseverance, practicality, invention, force of will, 
command of body, will have seen the beauty and virtue and need of order , 
the self-conceit of the merely glib memory will receive a paralyzing shock in 
the presence of the clear intellectual vision trained to exactitude and percep- 
tion of right relations ; and that will introduce true democracy which shows 
vivid intelligence, refined habits, a cultured family line, sharing the stains of 
the hands of toil. 

There are economic views of the benefit of slojd, moreover; it has been 
said, owing to the tyranny of trades-unions, that an American child can learn 
a trade only in the penitentiary, yet any finished student in manual training 
— it being remembered, too, that the intellectual training is coincident — has 
learned the use of tools so that he needs but a few months to make himself 
master of any trade he will. But there is a greater economic view of the 
matter in observation of the effect of the system on the child's brain, body, 
and soul. 

But when school and lessons and master are done with, or very nearly 
so, the result of all that has been done is to be evident in the home. It will 
then be seen, if knowledge of the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit, if the skill 
to calculate eclipses, and acquaintance with the most ancient or the most 
modern tongue, has developed faithfulness in the young student's orbit, if the 
moral and emotional qualities have been as well rounded and perfected as the 
mental ones, and if an intellectual monster has been produced, instead of a 
loving and sympathetic being. Surely the answer will be a favorable one, if 
from the beginning the mother has given her child that full sympathy which 
creates both return of sympathy and unfettered confidence ; has held before it 
the standards of honor and of truth, has taught it the joy of brotherhood, the 
love of humanity, and far from being the tyrannical ruler of days and doings, 
has been the sharer of studies, hopes, fears, joys, and dreams; and if the 
father has been in himself the fulfillment of his child's ideal of him. 

The daughter of that mother, of the mother who deserves her, win not 
have been trained merely to books, to the pencil, the piano, belles-lettres, but 
to all the virtues of home as well. She will know the kitchen arts, at least 
elementarily; she will be able to take the charge of a younger child's ward- 
robe off the mother's hands, the care of the drawing-room, the arrangement 



290 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




THE LITTLE FACE LIES NEAR HER OWN. 



of flowers, of table decorations; and she will know enough of the arts of the 
hospital, of bed-making, of bandaging, of the dressing of wounds, not to be 
half heart-broken at her inability to give relief to the suffering whom she 
loves. She will remember that we are all alike the children of life ; she will 
be a sister to the beggar within her gates; she will be incapable of small de- 
ceits. And the son of that mother will reverence her as the visible expres- 
sion to him of heavenly power on earth, will have learned from her how to 
famish his evil passions, to nourish his loftier ones, will have acquired self- 
control, self-abnegation, the strength of his father, the purity of his sister. 
And if there is any further beauty to be known than the relations of such a 
mother and her son, of such a father and his daughter, it is to some other 
sphere that we must go to find it. 



At the Hurricane Light. 

The children of the JJurricane Light are not examples of the kindergar- 
ten methods— rather of Mrs. Wesley's plan than of anything else. But I 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 291 

think that neither Jack nor Emeline would have been as fine characters if 
they had not been reared on the true kindergarten principle, that of love. 

The summer hotel stood alone on a point of rock in the sea, the narrow 
peninsula that led back to the mainland, washed over by frozen tides till, long 
before midwinter, there was no peninsula to be seen, only something like a 
broad floe of broken, tumbled blocks of ice full of crevasses and water-streaks 
and danger, although there was a sort of way along it. But the father of 
these children had some idea of frosting the malaria out of their blood, and 
thought staying there would be a novel experience, doing them good in many 
ways, while giving him the very chance he wanted for investigating some 
scientific matters in relation to ice and snow, germ -life and sea-currents. 
And so he had proposed, as long as somebody must stay in the hotel where 
they had passed the summer, to keep it from burning down, as summer hotels 
are apt to do if left vacant, that he would remain and attend to his studies 
there. 

If Clara had been older she would have seen a world of poetry in the un- 
usual life ; for, when they were established in the big dining-hall, nothing 
could be quainter. Their father had put a heater in the basement, and the 
air from that, together with the fires in three huge stoves and in the open 
chimney, gave the room a summer warmth. At the lower end was the 
kitchen stove ; and here were temporary shelves for the bright tins and the pans 
of milk skimmed by the pretty Swedish girls, whose long yellow braids made 
one think the serving-maids of the middle ages looked just that way. On 
one side of the room the windows were full of Aunt Marion's plants, and on 
the other were a tall book-case, a secretary for papa's papers, scientific tables, 
trays, and cabinets, and his charts upon the wall ; and at the upper end was 
mamma's table and easel and work basket, and the piano and mirror and open 
fire, soft rugs and lounges and arm-chairs. And, as Aunt Marion said, it 
was the old hall of the primitive castle over again, with the lady on her dais 
at one end, and the maids and their spinning at the other. Their sleeping- 
rooms were just overhead ; but they were in no hurry to go to them when, 
through the wide windows and through the glass doors on every side, they 
could see the sun set over the sea and the moon rise over the land, and dark- 
ness gathering on the waters, and storms coming up, and now and then dis- 
tant sails slipping by like dreams, catching the sparkle of the light-house 
lamp that for an instant brought them into life and light. 

After all, the days — however long they may have been to Aunt Marion — 
went by without seeming of appreciable length at all to the children, what 
with lessons, and practicing and watching papa's experiments, and climbing 
about the broken ice near the house, and skating- on one of the broad piazzas 



292 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

that had been flooded and frozen for them. And presently, indeed, the days 
were far too short for Clara's and Nell's mysterious preparations for Christ- 
mas, which at last was close at hand. 

When this all too sudden twilight came, Tom and Clara used often to 
conjecture about the children over at the Hurricane Light — the great white 
tower that loomed over the blue sea, the tower from whose summit they had 
so many times seen the light tremble and grow strong over the purpling 
waters of summer eves, with its narrow wooden causeway across waters 
always foaming between the tower and the rest of the island rock. They 
fancied all sorts of things concerning them ; for they had heard there were 
two children there — little Jack and Emeline — with their father, the sturdy 
keeper of the light, and his assistant, Dan. But that was all they knew. 

"Do you suppose there is any mother?" asked Will, with his nose flat- 
tened on the glass, as they watched for the light. 

"No," said Clara. ' ' Of course not. ' ' 

"Gh! How can they do without a mother?'' 

"I don't see, I'm sure. But Emeline takes care of their clothes, I guess; 
and the man helps her do the work and lifts the heavy things. And' some- 
times — I shouldn't wonder — she sews at the little windows and looks out and 
thinks about how many children there are here. And perhaps she watches 
for our lights just as we do for hers, and wishes we could go over and play 
there of an afternoon. And sometimes her father lets her go up with him 
when he lights the lights. There they are now ! Red and green, ruby and 
emerald — just a blaze! Oh! isn't it like Providence? Sure to be there the 
moment the twilight thickens ; always there ; I never thought about it in the 
summer." 

"Yes," said Tom. "And don't you know, I'd rather keep a light-house 
than do anything else on earth; or water either" — stopping to consider if a 
light-house belonged to earth or water. 

"What! Rather than be doctors, like papa and Uncle John, or be in 
business, or preach" 

"Anybody can preach. Aunt Marion's always preaching; and besides, 
I've heard mamma say a person should be sure he can preach well before 
he takes charge of folks' souls. But the light-housekeeper saves men's 
bodies every time he lights his lamps." And Tom felt like a preacher him- 
self. 

"What would happen," asked Will, anxiously, hugging his kitten closer, 
"if he didn't light the lamps?" 

"The ships at sea wouldn't see it, and they wouldn't know where they 
were. They wouldn't say 'Hallo! Here's old Hurricane Light! Now we've 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



2 93 




THE HURRICANE LIGHT-HOUSE. 



Wreckers' Reef to keep clear of on the larboard and Drowned Man's Ledge 
on the port, and the Tushes to give a wide berth to ' " 

"Larboard and port mean the same thing." 

"Oh! you know too much, Clara!" continued Tom. "It doesn't make 
any odds. The ships know there are all these dangers 'round the spot where 
this light burns, and they luff and bear away." 

"And so, if the light shouldn't burn," began Will, tearfully 

"And so, if the light shouldn't burn," said Tom, solemnly, "first a red 
and then a green flash, first a red and then a green, all night long, the coast 
would be strewn with wrecks from Maine to Mexico. I heard papa say so." 

"Do you suppose," asked Nell, pushing Will aside for her own better 
view, "that Jack and Emeline ever go ashore?" 

"No. Everything's laid in for the winter; and so they don't need to 
go, " said Tom. "And they couldn't go easily if they did, papa says. It's 
all anybody can do to get over from here." 

"They could come across that strip of water in their boats." 

"Now look here! That strip of water is black as ink. A man might 



294 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

maybe. But what boy, the size of Jack, would be crawling down those slip- 
pery sides of the icy rock to get into a swinging boat sliding away from 
under ?" 

'I would," said Will. 

4 'Folks always would do what they can't," said Tom, with grandeur. "I 
guess Jack and Emelme don't do it very often. I wouldn't." 

''And if they could/' said Clara, "and could get on our headland, the ice 
changes with every tide, and the blocks are too big to climb over, and there's 
deep water in between. If Uncle John does come to-morrow, I don't see how 
he'll ever get out, or ever get back/' 

"Uncle John, 1 '' said Tom, "can do everything." 

"I should think Aunt Marion would be so worried!" 

"Do you suppose Jack and Emeline will hang up their stockings?" asked 
Will, not interested in sentimental matters. 

"How is Santa Claus going to get out therewith his reindeers?" answered 
Tom, loftily. 

"Why, of course they will," said Clara. ''Emeline has knit Jack some- 
mittens, and Jack " 

"Do you suppose, 1 ' said Nell, "that they know there's Tom and Clara 
and Will and Russ and me here?" 

"Perhaps they don't call us Tom and Clara. Perhaps they call us Dick 
and Bell, just as we call them." 

"I tell you," said Will. "Don't you think it would be nice if we made 
some Christmas for them?" 

"But we couldn't get it out to them; don't you know?" said Tom. 

"Uncle John could get it out to them whenhe comes," said Russell, with 
the general faith in Uncle John. "What would you make for them?" 

"Isa could bake a cake early to-morrow morning" 

"With plums in it!" 

"And frosting'" 

"And Aunt Marion would pick a bunch of her flowers, roses and violets, 
if you ask her, Tom," said Nell. 

"And a calla-lily." 

"And papa could give them a silver dollar." 

"But that wouldn't be us," said Clara, on whom it dawned that they 
were very generous with other folks' things "They can have my Girls' Own 
Book." 

"And my 'Robinson Crusoe.' " 

"And my 'Pilgrim's Progress,' " said Tom. 

"I would give them my top, if I had another," said Russell. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



295 




'You always were a stingy!" exclaimed Clara. 

"I'm not stingy! I don't want to give it to them if I want it myself; 
20 I?" 

"Well, perhaps they have a top. There's your parchesi-board. " 

"We like to play with that sometimes, you know." 

"Or the kaleidoscope." 

"Why, of course I'm not done with my kaleidoscope!" 

"I guess Russell won't give anything," said Nell. 

"Yes, I will, too! I'll give the transparent slate." 

"'Tisn't yours to give, " said Nell. "It's mine. But I'd just as lief. 
And Emeline may have my doll Queenie ; that is, if Queenie would like to 



"And her cradle?" 

"Ye-e-s." 

"Well, I guess I shall have to give Jack my box of tools," said Tom, 
with a fine air, "and trust to luck or Uncle John for another." 

"And they might have the little camera that doesn't belong to anybody, 
and the second-best box of colors, with the old geography to paint over." 

"Do you suppose they'd like a kitten?" asked Will 

"Pshaw! They have half a hundred, very likely, now." 

"Half a hundred kittens! Oh! how I wish I lived in a light-house!" 

"Well, you do; the next best or the next worse thing. Though I never 
dreamed we should have neighbors. They really are neighbors, you know, 
it we don't see much of them or anything of them," said Clara. "There, if 
Aunt Marion will make a lot of her cider-candy to-morrow, to put in, I think 
that will do for Jack and Emeline. Don't you? The question is, how ever 
shall Ave get it out to them?" 

"Wait for Uncle John. He will," said Nell. 

"I'm glad they don't want the kitty," murmured Will, hugging his pet, 



296 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

as they went off to bed. . " Ifs only one more day now. If there isn't a red 
collar on the tree for my kitty I shall be awful cross!" 

"I really think," said Clara to her Aunt Marion, when they said good- 
night, and a broad ray of the light-house lamp came skimming into the room, 
"that it isn't so bad as I thought it was going to be here, seeing we have 
some neighbors." 

Every few moments those great rays went sweeping by and bridging the 
darkness between the lonely hotel and the white pillar of the light-house in 
the night. Perhaps it was on that bridge that Jack's and Emeline's fancies 
traveled across the water and the long tongue of ice-wrapped land, to these 
children, with their pretty heads huddled together in the window-panes of 
the vast empty hotel. 

"There's children over there," said Emeline. "I saw them through 
father's glass, They were playing on the long piazza." 

"I wish we had a piazza,'"' said Jack. 

"Our causeway's just as good, in calm weather." 

"No, it isn't. The ball bounces off into the water, and then I have to 
swim for it, and sometimes it's too cold, and sometimes there's a sea on and I 
can't go for it." 

"I always make another, you know," said the motherly little body beside 
him. 

"And we can't play marbles there, because they all roll off. " 

"We can play catch." 

"Well, sometimes it's too wet with the breaking sea. Shouldn't you like 
to live, Em, where there isn't any sea?" 

"The Bible says there isn't any sea in heaven. But I don't believe we 
should like it there. I guess we should miss the sea. Not to hear it, not to 
see it — it would be like not having any mother over again. It always sings 
us to sleep. ' ' 

"Mothers don't make such a noise as this old surf does some nights, when 
you can't hear yourself breathe. Say, Em, do you remember mother?* 

"A little. Not much," answered Emeline, "Only just that her eyes 
were the color the sea is far out under the sky in soft weather. Dove's eyes, 
that it tells of in the Bible. " 

"Hard on father to do without her; aint it? But he says you're just 
mother over again, any way. Only not your eyes. For yours are the color 
of the pools where the sun shines through the brown sea-weed. Do you sup- 
pose mother knew when Christmas came? Father doesn't." 

"No matter. We do. Father has so much to think of. It's so awfully 
important to keep the light all night. - It would be so terrible if the light went 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



297 




Dut and the ships and 
people went down ; and 
only think, so many 
fathers on them, too; 
with children waiting 
for them at home. Oh! 
it's awfully important, 
you see; and he can't 
think of everything." 

"Well, if I had a lit- 
tle boy, I'd think of 
Christmas, I know. I'd 
give him a plane and a 
saw and chisel, any 
way." 

"Perhaps he will. 
He'll think of it when I 
give him the comforter 
I've made." 

"I know what he'll say. He'll say just what he did last year; that you're 
the best little comforter. ' ' 

"Oh!" said Emeline, with her cheeks glowing: "We have to be very 
good to father, he's had so much trouble. It was dreadful for him to lose 
mother, and have us babies to bring up. And he's real good to us. Some 
fathers whip their boys." 

"Whip their boys! I guess so. How you talk! Father never whipped 
me. He shook me once. I thought then I'd run away. Any way, I don't 
mean to stay here when I'm a man. Days when the sea is gray and black, 
and the rain is driving by, and the waves go off like great guns, I think I'll 
get away any time. " 

"And leave father and me?" said Emeline, pitifully, "when you're all 
we have?" 

"I'd send for you. I couldn't do without you, you know. Oh! There's 
their light! The children's over on the reef. Now let's get father's glass 
again and look at them." And Jack fitted the long spy-glass to his eye with 
expedition. "There's ever so many of them. I should think there was a 
dozen. And one of them has a kitten. Oh! say, Em, I wish we had a kit- 
ten! And one has pushed the kitten boy away. I guess they're talking, by 
the way their heads go. What if they are talking about us? 1 " 

"Oh! they wouldn't be. I don't suppose they know of us. Maybe 



298 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

they're watching the witches make tea. I used to like to watch the witches 
making tea, before I knew it was only the picture of our lamp in the window 
pane, dancing out there. See the long rays of the tower-lamps wheeling 
about there now ; one of them made a bridge clear way over to the children. 
They always make me think of that Bible verse about God's laying the beams 
of His chambers upon the waters." 

' 'Things always put you in mind of the Bible. Does it say anything 
about Christmas there?" And while he still used the glass, Emeline went to 
the table and read him the story St. Luke tells about the shepherds keeping 
their flocks. 

'I think of it often," said Emeline, 'summer nights when we are all 
sitting up outside the tower, and the Milky Way seems a road right into 
heaven, and the stars are spirits — great shining spirits — sweeping along. It 
will be splendid, oh ! it will be splendid, after we are dead if we are just such 
great spirits, sweeping and shining with stars on our foreheads. ' ' 

"I'd rather be alive," said Jack. 

"Yes," said Emeline, half regretfully. "Of course; so should I; with 
you and father." 

"But I suppose," said Jack, "we might just as well be three spirits all 
alone out there in the night as three people all alone here in the light-house. 
Only it's warm here and light. Say, Em, what do you suppose those children 
are going to have Christmas?" 

'Oh! everything. They may have a Christmas tree. And if it's clear 
weather we may see it through the glass to-morrow night." 

"To-morrow? Day after to-morrow's Christmas." 

"But to-morrow's Christmas Eve. Folks always have their trees, I guess, 
Christmas Eve. We always hear the bells ringing from the towns, if we lis- 
ten, you know." 

"Oh!" said Jack. "I suppose we could make some molasses candy with 
nuts in it, any way," he added, presently. 

"And father will tell us the story of when he was a little boy" 

"It doesn't seem as if father ever was a little boy; does it? There, 
they've gone to bed, now," as he shut up the spy-glass. "I say, Em, it's first 
rate to have neighbors, ain't it? They're just as good as deaf and dumb 
neighbors anyhow. We can see 'em if we can't talk to 'em." 

"Yes; we never did have neighbors in the winter before. I wish we 
could send them some of our nut-candy," said Emeline. "Yes, it's real nice 
to have neighbors. " 

And before long, while the light-keeper toiled up and down his winding 
stairs to attend to the clock-work of the lamps, the children were asleep, while 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 299 

the broad beams went on their way through the darkness, leading the great 
ships by with the green and crimson rays glancing on their stiff and frozen 
sails 

There was enough frost in the gray air next day for Christmas weather, 
certainly ; but the blue sky and sunshine, that go with the last Christmas 
errands, were not to be seen. Indeed, the atmosphere was full of frozen 
spiculae of snow too chill to fall. Nor was there any of the clear, night 
sparkle, where the stars seem to join crisp tones with the glad ringing of the 
bells. 

In the mediaeval hall, as Aunt Marion called it, the children were pranc- 
ing about the screens that hid the unlighted tree, and wondering why Uncle 
John didn't come, and if he wasn't coming at all, and if they would have the 
tapers lit before he came, and adding something every little while to the par- 
cel that was to be gotten over to the light-house by hook or by crook, when 
Uncle John came, if he ever did come. 

And in the light-house home, Emeline had the spider on the stove, and 
the molasses bubbling, while Jack was picking the meats out of the nuts, and 
their father was up busy with the lamps ; for the night was going to be so 
cold he feared it might congeal the oil; and the dim day was growing dim- 
mer. The nuts were in at last, and with one more boiling up Emeline's 
platter was buttered, and the compound that had already made Jack's mouth 
water was set out to cool in the twilight. 

"Oh! if it isn't cold!" she said, with a shiver, shutting the door. "And 
I declare I believe I've upset the trough that father has those frozen sea 
creatures in to find out if they'll come to life when the} T thaw out in the 
spring. I must see. And it's dark, so dark! How I pity children without 
homes on such a night as this ! How quick it grew dark. I didn't notice it. ' ' 

"Nor I," said Jack, still picking at a nut-shell. 

"I can't beat the dark," said Emeline, bustling about for a candle. 

"Nor I," said Jack again. "It — it always seems like a great — a great — 
thing — out there, you know." 

"I suppose it's because we've always had the light, the beautiful great 
beams of the tower light. And— Why, Jack! where is the light? Oh! where 
is the light? We never were this way before! Can't father light it? O, 
father!" and she opened the door, to dart up the tower stairs, and tripped 
over something lying at their foot. 

It was her father lying there. He had fallen — from what height who 
could tell, or whether stumbling, or whether with a stroke! He lay cold and 
unconscious. He might be dead. She did not utter another syllable; but 
she used all her strength and dragged him over the threshold, and stopped 



300 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

and pulled a little way again, till Jack sprang to her aid, and between them 
they got him across the room to his bed. It had taken almost a half hour to 
do it. Emeline threw herself beside him, her mouth on his, her tears raining 
over his cold face. "He's breathing! He's breathing!" she cried out. And 
suddenly she was on the floor again. "The lamps! The lamps!" she ex- 
claimed. "O, Jack, you know how. You must go up and light them!' 

'I can't! Oh! I can't, Em," he said, between his sobs. "I can't go up 
there in the dark!" 

"You must!" she answered. "I can't leave father yet. Oh! do go, 
Jack!" she cried, in an agony. "Just think of the ships, of the wrecks, of 
the other children's fathers drowned and dead, if the light isn't burning; if 
you don't go!" 

"I — I can't, " he said. 

"But if you don't, I shall have to. I shall have to leave father; and 
perhaps he'll die if I do. He may never come to if I don't get the mustard 
on! Do, Jack dear! Do go, Jack!" She was already hurrving about for 
clothes and hot water. 

"I— I can't!" said Jack again. "But— well, I'll try." And he lighted 
the lanterns slowly, and left the door open, and began to climb the stairs, 
stopping at every step. And Emeline was binding the mustard plasters on 
her father's feet and neck, and filling jugs with hot water to put on either 
side of him, and holding his rough hand and kissing it, crying and trembling 
and frightened ; for now he was breathing, indeed ; breathing in such a fear- 
ful way that she thought every breath must be the last. 

But why didn't the beams sweep out ? Why was it still so dark out there ? 
Couldn't Jack light the lamps ? Hadn't he gone? She ran to the doorway. 
There he sat crouched half way up. "Oh! haven't you gone, Jack?" she 
cried in despair. 

"I — I told you I couldn't!" he replied. "I feel as if all those dreadful 
things that will happen if the lamps ain't lighted are up there now." 

She glanced back at her father. She could do no good if she stayed be- 
side him. Up she dashed, caught the lantern from Jack, who meekly fol- 
lowed her as she almost flew on her upward way. One glance when well 
within the tower-chamber, and she saw that the clock-work which turned the 
wheel about was broken ; and it was in his anxiety and haste for some neces- 
sary tool with which to mend it that her father had fallen. "Oh! what made 
us let Dan off for his Christmas?" she groaned. "There is nothing but to 
turn the wheel with our hands." And she lighted lamp after lamp and began 
to drag the wheel about. "And one of us must do it all night long; and one 
of us must go for the doctor. ~ Which shall it be?" 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



301 



And Jack, in the bottom of his cowardly little soul, felt that it would not 
be he. It was impossible; he could not do either. Stay there alone in that 
place, dragging the wheel around, with his father dying, perhaps dead — stiff 
and cold and dead — and the horrible vacancy where he had been ? Oh ! he 
never, never could. He would rather die at once, himself, here, with Eme- 
line beside him. And he didn't want to die; he wasn't like Emeline; death 
was something unspeakably dreadful to him. But then, on the other hand, 
to go down into that black water underneath the causeway in the pitchy dark, 
and try to climb those icy shores opposite, and make his way in the night 
across those heaps of ice with the deep channels between them, and not a star, 
only the black, monstrous dark all about; and he would be lost and drowned 
and frozen. Oh ! he never, never could. 

"But father will die if we can't get a doctor; and he would rather die 
than have the lamps go out, " urged Emeline. "One of us must go. It's 
nothing to stay here and turn the wheel, that's a good boy, dear, and I will 
go for the doctor. I can do that as well as you, you know. ' ' And so she 
could ; for she could handle a boat as easily as other girls could trundle a 
hoop. 

As Jack gazed at Emeline aghast, her face seemed to be shining and smil- 
ing on him like an angel's. She already looked like one of those white shin- 
ing spirits she had spoken of the night before. He felt as if it were a sort of 
sign — if she went she would become one of those great shining spirits, not his 
little loving, living Emeline. His little Emeline out there in all those icy 
horrors and the blackness! The tears spurted out at the thought. He said 
something seemed to snap in his head or his heart, he could not tell which, 
and let him out, let him free from all his fear and shrinking. "Good-bye, 
Emeline," he called, out, choking. "I'll go. And if I don't come 
back"— 




3 o2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"If you don't," she cried, stopping to throw her arms about him, "father 
will be dead, and I will, too, and it will be all the same; for we shall be 
together somewhere else!" And Jack took the lantern and came running 
back with her cloak and hood ; and then his step rang on the stairs again, she 
heard the tower door slam, and nothing more, while she kept on her weary 
way dragging the lamps around, and out there the sea made its cry. 

Poor little Jack! As he plunged into the night Emeline's white look 
seemed stamped on the darkness, together with the fixed and suffering face, 
livid and purple, on his father's pillow. How could any fear, he thought 
now, keep him from bringing help? He did not stay to untie the painter of 
his boat, cased in ice, as it was ; he cut it with his jack-knife when he had 
dropped into the boat, and dipping his oars into the blackness, ferried 
across, guided by the flashing of the lamps that Emeline dragged round, 
in which everything started out one moment, and then was lost in blacker 
shadow. 

I can't imagine how he climbed those rocks of the headland, mere sheets 
of ice ; but he did. Boys can do almost anything. And he caught the rope 
in a cleft of the ice, knowing it would freeze there and keep the boat waiting 
for the doctor. He never doubted the doctor's coming through all the dan- 
ger; for it is a way that doctors have. Behind him now the lamps kept up 
their flashing. Far, far off on his left glimmered the windows of the hotel 
where the children were ; far, far ahead the town lights flickered. On he ran ; 
swiftly wherever snow lay frozen and smooth ; climbing and slipping, down 
and up again, where the ice-blocks had been piled. Now there was a streak 
of water only two yards wide, he saw by his lantern ; he jumped, and the ice- 
cake tilted and rocked ; and he jumped again and clung to solid rock. Up 
and down, sliding, falling, rolling, but always moving on, on through this 
hideous gloom, with only the eyes of the glancing lights in it. What a hor- 
rible noise there was everywhere in the grinding, griding, crashing of the 
ice. It seemed as if the whole cruel North moved down in a body on him. 
He thought of people caught on ice floes, of packs of wolves racing and 
scratching along them, of some polar bear protecting her cubs there; and he 
ran all the faster. But what was there in all out-doors, then he thought, 
which would be allowed to hurt a boy encountering such dangers for his 
father's sake and Emeline's ? And he waited for his breath, his heart palpitat- 
ing furiously, his lungs like red-hot brass. As he stood there, a little fellow 
in his pea-jacket, with the dull lantern in his hand, it was like some hero de- 
fying the powers of cold and darkness with the might of his holy errand. 

He went on slowly; for the way grew more difficult on this narrow neck 
of the long peninsula, where the tide pushed the ice about and jammed it in 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 303 

mock icebergs glinting to the light-house beams which, fainter though they 
were with distance now, strengthened him, every time they came, with thought 
of Emeline at the wheel. He was scratched and bruised and bleeding; his 
clothes were torn, and his cap was gone; but he was conscious of nothing ex- 
cept that he must get on. He climbed laboriously a huge, sloping block of 
ice tipped ovei the way, slipping back half its height: and all at once he felt 
it move with him, pushed by another block, keep moving. And with a thrill 
of terror he realized that the tide was coming in, would shove and jam and 
heap and sweep across the neck of land, and if it did not crush him between 
the great pieces of ice, it would take him out to sea on the other side, do what 
he would! 

Just ahead, Jack knew, must lie the old road that took people to the hotel 
in summer, raised a little from the level, and so offering a barrier that it 
might take the rising ice some little time to surmount. If he could only gain 
it! He dashed forward with redoubled speed, bumping, splashing, tumbling 
on his knees, on his back, on his hands and feet, cutting himself on sharp 
corners, clutching his lantern all the time, and all the time making progress, 
when suddenly the darkness came down like a heavier pall, unrent by any rift 
of light, impenetrable. The long beams of the light-house lamps had ceased 
to flash. There were no more of them. He gazed behind him, and about 
him ; he could see nothing. The lamps had gone out. 

The piled-up ice-drift hid the windows where the happy children looked 
for their Uncle John, where the beautiful dark eyes so often looked over their 
shoulders ; hid the sparkle of the town as well. He did not know which way 
to turn; there was nothing but unbroken blackness, blackness and cold about 
him; he was getting numb with standing still and wondering; the ice was 
crunching like great jaws at work; the snow was beginning to fall over it all. 
He was lost. 

Back in the mediaeval hall, the children peered through the window. 

"I don't believe Uncle John means to come at all!" cried Clara. 

"Perhaps he had some sick patient that he couldn't leave," urged her 
mother, coming to her side, a little anxious lest Aunt Marion were anxious. 
"Besides it isn't time for him, quite." 

"You don't suppose Uncle John can be lost?" whispered Will, as he felt 
Aunt Marion's hand tremble. 

"No, indeed," said his father "My dear," turning to his wife, "hadn't 
you better light the tree? It is already late." 

"Oh! stop! stop! stop!" cried Tom and Clara then in one breath. 
"Something — something has happened to the light -house! Oh! the world is 
coming to an end! The light has gone out!" 



3 o 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"And how will Uncle John ever see to get here?" cried Will, as Aunt 
Marion suddenly clasped him in her arms. 

•'And what do you suppose has become of Jack and Emeline?" exclaimed 
Nell, bursting into tears. 

"Light the tapers, and divert the children quickly as you can," said the 
father hurriedly to anybody in the universe. "I will get the men and see 
what can be done about crossing over there!" 

"Oh! you never will try that!" exclaimed his wife. "You know it is 
impossible!" 

'If it is, I shan't do it," he said, smiling. 

"But what could you and two men do? Wait at any rate, for John and 
his man. You will be lost and drowned' I know you will!" 

''Nonsense, my love! I will run no unnecessary risk. But that light out 
to-night, snow thickening, and storm coming, means shipwreck that I can't 
have on my conscience. Hands off, dear! It must be done. But first of all 
have half a dozen of the lanterns lighted and tied to a pole and thrust out of 
the cupola window for John's direction. Hurry now!" And then one was 
getting his long boots, and another his coats, and another the lights; and in 
the midst of it all, the screens slid away and the tapers blazed out, and one of 
the doors burst open with much stamping and outcry, and there was Uncle 
John and his companion and the burden that they bore among their other 
parcels, "A little lad half frozen," said Uncle John, staying to greet nobody, 
and laying his burden on a lounge. "Lucky the train was late. I heard him, 
and saw his lantern, just beside the old road. Bring some of that snow, and 
be quick about it! Now rub for your life'" And then Uncle John had 
turned and opened his arms and the beautiful brown eyes were hid upon his 
breast. 

When Jack was well tucked away in bed, and the people had made their 
way to the light-house, they found the oil in the lamps congealed and Emeline 
fainted beside the wheel. But Uncle John knew how to right all that; and 
what to do for the father, too. And while the rest obeyed directions in the 
tower, he attended to the light-keeper's concussion of the brain, and spent his 
Christmas with Emeline. 

"How glad I am we stayed here," said Clara, afterward. "If wehadn't, 
you know, the ships would have been wrecked , the light-house keeper would 
have died, and Emeline and Jack would have frozen to death. It's the nicest 
Christmas Eve I ever knew' Everybody ought to spend Christmas Eve out in 
old seaside taverns, I think!" And one would suppose Clara had done so 
purposely. 

, "I thought I had really died and gone to heaven, you better believe, " 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



305 



said Jack, telling Emeline his adventures for the hundredth time, "when I 
opened my eyes, and that Christmas tree was twinkling, all lights and colors, 
with the children, and those women like angels! And I don't know but what 
I did! For it's like heaven to think father's going to help these doctors 
about their experiments and things, and you and I will live with the children, 
and grow up with Tom and Clara, and never lay eyes again on old Hurricane 
Light!" 




3 o6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER TWELFTH 



Other Children. 

Wax to receive, and marble to retain. 

— Byron. 
I remember. I remember 

How my childhood fleeted by — 
The mirth of its December, 
And the warmth of its July. 

— W. M. Praed. 

With the smile that was childlike and bland. 

— Bret Harte. 

We pardon in the degree that we love. 

— Rochej aucau Id. 

Use three physicians — 
Still first Dr. Quiet, 
Next Dr. Meryman 
And Dr. Dyet. 

— Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum. 

Nature fits all the children with something to do. 

— ■/. R. Lowell. 

How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start 
When memory plays an old tune on the heart. 

— Eliza Cook. 

There was a place in childhood that I remember well, 

And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell 

— Samuel Lover. 

Themostocles said: The Athenians command the rest of Greece, 1 command the Athe- 
nians; your mother commands me; and you command your mother.— Plutarch. 

It is not all children that are reared in the love lines of the kindergar- 
ten methods, or in any other method that makes them a blessing to themselves 
or to the community. Often circumstances master the parents, and the 
children shift for themselves and are in reality reared by their hereditary 
traits, and sometimes when the young mother has little knowledge or skill 
and no assistance, and proceeds with the old fear of sparing the rod, she is 
halt beside herself by reason of the development of those traits before her 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 307 

eyes, and finds that, labor as she may to bring about happiness in her home, 
the very things that should make for happiness, the children, themselves, are 
growing up to precisely an opposite result. But since it has been discovered 
that homesickness is a disease, that laziness also is a disease, — apt to be in- 
curable — that an inclination to petty thefts of things not wanted, and sometimes 
thrown away at once, is a mania, often inherited, and no more within the 
power of the patient to control than any more violent mania is — it is to be 
imagined that many other emotional matters may come under the same head, 
and gradually reach a similar classification as ailments to be medicined rather 
than wickednesses to be punished. 



Medicine Rather Than Punishment 

In no way will this theory be of more useful application than in the rear- 
ing of children, who, from having been regarded since time began as full of 
the old Adam, which is to be chastised and whipped out of them, will now be 
seen as victims of the diseases of their tender years, and be untiringly diag- 
nosed and medicated therefor. 

Not that the maternal rhubarb bottle will take the place of the maternal 
slipper, but that divine patience will be more frequently invoked to fill out 
the measure of human patience, and it will be comprehended that naughti-. 
nesses are no more to be whipped out of children than spots out of a leopard, 
or evil desires out of grown people; and that if you can not "reason with a 
mule, "you can with a child, even but just escaping babyhood, if you are will- 
ing to curb your own temper, to forget yourself, and not to fail in exhaustless 
gentleness; and that only those that can so curb temper and exercise self-for- 
getfulness have any business to be about children at all. 

How many people do we see who are punishing children for their own 
faults, inherited and repeated without choice in the matter, administering the 
punishment all in good faith, and because they know the trouble those faults 
have given themselves, and are likely to give the little victims as they in- 
crease in years and find themselves in the toils, and because they think it best 
in pure love to drive out the evil spirit, as if the very process of such sweep- 
ing and garnishing, in exciting enmity and rage, and heating blood and brain, 
did not invite the other seven worse than the first to enter and take possession ! 



Heredity. 

All parents are happy in viewing themselves when repeated in their 
children, as if it were a sure pledge of immortality that this line of face, that 
breadth of temple, this curve of eyebrow or of lip, were to be handed down 




feo8) 



THE LOVE LINES OF THE KINDERGARTEN METHODS. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 309 

the generations ; and pleasant as they find all that, just so bitter do they find 
it when unfortunate traits, that previously might have been repressed in 
themselves, tut that have not been, and that only afford misery, are brought 
into action through inheritance, and they see their own sins finding them out 
again. Yet although they may have reason to doubt if any rod ever hindered 
their lying, or did anything but drive them to concealment; if any depriva- 
tion of desired things ever made unselfishness in them, or did anything but 
aggravate avarice , if any ridicule ever made the difficult problem easy of 
comprehension, or if any of the compulsory and primitive methods wrought 
any but momentary and superficial gaining of an object, and lasting harm 
and hurt — still they go on with these methods, the rod, the dark closet, the 
make-game, the robbery (to call it its true name), and hinder the mental and 
moral growth of the generation by just so much unwise action in treating 
children like criminals. 

That children have always been regarded as delicious and delightful 
things, when giving nobody any anxiety as to their real welfare, is quite un- 
disputed ; but when this anxiety arises, whether they are criminals or have 
been but too often the victims of criminals is a question that might be con- 
sidered to their advantage. Meanwhile even our treatment of criminals 
grows to partake less and less of the punitive character, and more and more of 
the hindering and curative. 



Sparing the Rod. 

If we look with condemnation on the whipping-post for grown people in 
the full possession of all the faculties they ever had, how can we approve of 
the slipper used on children with faculties but half developed? The general 
sense of all civilization now seems to be that we shall not revenge ourselves 
for crime, but shall simply prevent its further commission ; how, then, can 
we treat tender little beings, without the power to help themselves, with any 
less consideration? Assuredly the time is not distant when duty in this re- 
gard will be seen from a different point of view from that from which it has 
been regarded in the past. The half-opened blossom will not be made to 
suffer unnecessary pain for the worm at its heart, nor shut, up away from the 
sunshine that the worm may be left to eat in peace, but gentle forces will 
find the blight and remove it, and let the bud bloom to what perfection it may 
in all the sunshine it can have. That it may take almost infinite patience to 
bring up children as children, and not as criminals, is not to weigh in the 
least against the necessity. Infinite patience is the first fruit of all true love, 
and no mother, no aunt, no guardian of children, has a right to be without a 



3io 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




NOT TO FAIL IN EXHAUSTLESS GENTLENESS. 

goodly supply of it, and while attending to the good of the children other- 
wise, to be busy besides in the active cultivation of this heavenly plant in 
themselves. There are numberless ways of repressing evil without exciting 
it, and of cutting off sin, not by lopping the little branches, but by gently 
digging round the root, and exterminating as much as can be reached at once 
in the yet imperfect system, which is to grow more perfect as each generation 
regards its successors as something, if not already superior to itself, at any 
rate to be made so, and not to be kept inferior by the lash of tongue and 
rod. 

But it requires love to repress evil gently and firmly, to rear children 
with the tenderness that condemnation of rude methods requires, and every 
one does not naturally possess this love. That is a bold person who con- 
fesses so flagrant a fault as an absence from the composition of the love of 
children, not one's own merely, but all people's children. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 311 

Loving Children. 

For that love has become universally recognized as a necessary feature 
of a worthy nature, as something by the absence of which one is indeed 
unnatural, not to say monstrous. Owing to this fact, it is very seldom that 
one admits, even when feeling it, that children are a nuisance, and more 
generally people consider it wise to pretend interest and affection whether 
it is genuine or not. Of course, as everybody knows, the politic person, 
the electioneering man, the woman with an object to gain, always begins 
by kissing the children ; and the behavior of many young ladies in regard 
o the matter was long since caricatured by Dickens in one of his sketches, 
where he represents them crowding round the nurse who brings in the 
baby to the christening, and asking, as if with innocent ignorance and a 
reminiscence of kittens and puppies, if the dear little thing can open its 
eyes yet. 

But there are many people who honestly think they do love children, 
and would be mightily indignant if told that they deceived themselves, 
that children annoyed them, and were on the whole rather disagreeable 
than otherwise to them. These individuals do love children for a little 
while, as an amusement when they have nothing else to do, and to caress 
when the child is sunny and pretty and sweet and clean. But let the child 
be ugly, and it does not attract them; let it be neglected, and of a dirty 
face, and it repels them ; let it scream, and they can't for the life of them 
see why people bring their children on journeys, or to church, or into the 
drawing-room, or at the table — according to the situation of the particular 
annoyance at the moment. 

But they who surely and absolutely love children do not stay to see 
whether their faces and frocks are clean and pretty or not — the child is a 
lovely thing to them under all the mask of the dust of which we are made, 
the soil, the wear and tear; they do not much care whether the child 
screams or not ; often, indeed, to them, as to the old miner in the Califor- 
nia theatre who, when a baby set up its pipes, called out to the orchestra 
to stop their strumming and let him hear the baby yell, the sound is a sort 
of music ; and like the man who considered being beaten at whist the next 
pleasure to beating, they had rather hear a baby yell than not have one 
around at all. 

These who love children are not those who merely love the pleasure 
they can get from children ; those love, not the children, but that pleasure, 
and the moment it ceases to be pleasure, then farewell to the children. 
Those who really love children, love all about them, the troubling and the 




LITTLE MERCHANTS 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 313 

teasing that they make, the washing and wiping and worrying; they do 
not tire with their fretting, they are not disgusted with their care, they are 
not annoyed with their questioning, they are not made nervous by their 
bawling; they take them in their entirety; it never occurs to them to say 
that these things are disagreeable, for, in reality, the agreeable things, the 
loveliness, the velvet cheeks, the exquisite mouth with its little pearls, the 
perfect eyes, the opening soul, the charming intelligence, the constant 
sense of the creation of a new human being going on under the eyes, the 
receptivity of love, the thing for love, all so far overbalance anything that 
is not in accord with them as to put it entirely out of sight and mind. To 
those who love children it does not occur to wait before giving love in or- 
der to see if they are willful and spoiled, whether they cry too much, 
whether they are going to give trouble or not; they only say, "Here is a 
child; let us love it." They are ready to get up in the night with it, to 
walk the floor with it, to tread on tiptoe if it sleeps, to abandon themselves 
to its amusement if it wakes, to sing to it, to talk to it, to obey all its little 
tyrannies, to stay at home from other pleasure for it and think it no sacri- 
fice, to forget themselves in its existence, and when it is the most trouble 
to be thankful that there is a baby in the house. 



They Who Really Love Children, 

These are the people who do love children, not merely they, it may be 
seen, who love the peachy cheek which yields to their kisses with pleasant 
sensation, and the fragrance of the sweet baby breath; not merely they 
who like the tickling that their vacant or tired minds receive from the 
action of the young expanding intellect of the tiny creature, who are enter- 
tained by the stammering of the first thoughts and the effort after the first 
syllables, who are pleased in fine weather and run away in foul. These 
latter are the summer friends of the little people, and full soon do the little 
people find it out; for, as a general rule, one needs no better criterion as 
to who it is that loves children than observation of the fact of whom it is 
that the children love. It is true that children will be amused and pleased 
for a while by the summer sort of friends; but let a tumble, a grief, a pain, 
come to them, and the summer friend is discarded unerringly for the one 
whose sympathy is steadfast, and who does not ask whether it is a good 
child or a bad one, a pretty or a plain one, a rich or a poor, but only 
whether it is a child. " Frank, I love good little boys,' 1 said a worthy 
parent, trying to do his duty to an obstreperous young son. "Yes, papa," 



3 i4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

came the reply of the four-year-old, "but Uncle So-and-So loves little boys 
whether they are good or not. " And that, it seems to us, is the only way 
to love them ; for is it not the way in which we hope we ourselves are 
loved, not only by one another, but by the power above us? It is also, in- 
deed, the only way in which to obtain lasting pleasure from the little be- 
ings; for it is only when we have surrendered ourselves, without thought 
of what we obtain in return, but because we can not help it, and would not 
help it if we could, that we find out what they have done for us, the light 
and joy that they have brought into the house, with all the labor and con- 
fusion and care that they have brought there, too ; for more than once has 
it chanced that into a tumultuous and hating household the advent of a little 
child has brought peace and harmony, and love, too, not only for itself, but 
for all around it, till it has made lives dear and desirable that before it came 
seemed impossible to live ; for there are few such peacemakers as a baby ; 
none such, if we may believe the poet, as a baby's grave. 

Yet, while it is to be believed that all people love their own children, 
even if their love for the children of others is questionable, it would be a 
wise precaution on the part of one living or visiting in a house where there 
are children to learn something of child-love beforehand, if they wish to have 
any enjoyment of their life or of their visit, or to be a welcome member of 
the family. For unless there is our ideal mother in the house, and some- 
times it must be confessed if there is, the children will be apt to run riot. 

It is not every one who knows how to entertain and to take care of 
children properly at the same time. The little people are to their authors 
and owners astonishing and delightful circumstances, revelations of wonder; 
it is a marvel tnat they exist at all; and how much greater marvel that they 
are so lovely, so bright, so precocious, that they know black from white, that 
they can count three; how sweet the little syllables drop from thoir lips! how 
charming is the assertion of their will! how charming that they have a will 
at all! is all this possible? and is all this theirs? And the child is not only 
worshipped as a part of themselves and a possession, but as a subject of de- 
lightful awe and mystery in the very fact of its being. 



Troublesome Children. 

Of course this is quite right and pleasant with our own children; but 
somehow or other it does not seem half so right and pleasant with other 
people's children; and they are not half so charming in the assertion of their 
wills when they dispute the seat or the book with us, while politeness to their 
elders makes it rather difficult for us to assert our wills ; and they are subjects 




THE YOUNG EXPANDING INTELLECT. 



(31s) 



3 i6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

of no delightful awe and mystery at all when they are tumbling all over us 
with sticky fingers and daubed faces; when they burst into our sleeping- 
rooms in the morning; when they insist on crowding into the carriage already 
full ; when they set up a bawl in the middle of an interesting conversation, 
and instead of being scooped up and swept out of the room are expostulated 
with; when they disturb the peace of breakfast, dinner, and tea, when every- 
thing is interrupted by the demanding of these cherubs, and everything is 
so in abeyance to their wishes that elderly people seem to have no rights in 
the world at all, and the whole pleasure of one's visit to the parents, or the 
parents' visit to one's self, is destroyed by their presence and behavior, till 
we are inclined to believe that the correct definition of the word cherub is 
that other word imp. 

Of course parents owe an undisputed duty to their children, and it is 
necessary that the little things should be made happy, that their proper 
pleasures should be unrestricted; that their questions should be answered; 
that they should not be grieved or outraged ; that their lives should be one 
long remembrance of happiness as far as their parents can make them so. 
But these same people owe, also, an undisputed duty to their guests, when 
they have guests, and if they can not perform it, they certainly should not 
put themselves in the way of failing in it by having any guests, and it is 
just as right that the guests should not be grieved and outraged as that the 
children should not be. 

Only those people do that which is either agreeable or decent who regard 
their guests as wards, for the time being, if not actively to be made happy, 
yet to be allowed to be happy if they will, and who take into consideration 
whether or not these persons, who are thus at their mercy, can be happy 
with other people's children tyrannizing over them in the manner that one 
may so frequently see them do. It would seem as though plain common 
sense must teach people that their children are not as lovesome to all the 
world as to themselves; and that even if others find them very attractive. 
yet they may weary of what the natural ties of flesh and blood make it im- 
possible that they themselves should ever weary, and that it is to betaken 
for granted that certain things are disagreeable, and that it is not to be left 
to the guest to complain, or else pretend politely that it is all as it should 
be, when trodden and trampled on by a parcel of little people without fear of 
man. One, indeed, may be as fond of children as the next person, but, it is 
always to be understood that that means children in the right place, and where 
the guest is concerned the right place is never the first place. And if we 
happen to be the guest of the occasion how swiftly our thoughts run, and how 
much to the purpose. 




REPRIMANDED. 



(317) 



318 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

The Guest with Children. 

How differently, we say, we would bring these children up if we had 
them, and how badly they are being brought up by those that do have them ! 
In what cold blood do we look at them! They are not always children to 
us — the lovely blossoming things. They are little men and women, our 
neighbors in miniature, having the traits of their ancestors, of which traits 
we are apt through our family gossip to know more than the descendants of 
those ancestors do themselves, repeating this uncle or that aunt, or the old 
grandfather long gone, and exciting our animadversion, or, not so often, 
possibly our admiration, by the fact. Moreover, we forget in looking at 
them that we were ever children ourselves; we speak and think of them as of 
beings of a separate species, not quite of a lower order perhaps, and not quite 
cherubs certainly. But we expect of the little creatures whom we are unable 
to class the virtues and often the behavior of the grown folk, and we in our 
loftiness are capable of ruining their reputations, and giving them a name 
that it will take years of right living on their part in the future to overcome, 
if their little vagaries do not suit our own whims, while the high animal 
spirits of their happy years lead them into pranks that are not in conformity 
with our own staid and quiet way of life, in which the fermentation is over ; 
and, stern critics that we are, we sit in judgment like those that break butter- 
flies upon wheels. They would never conduct themselves in this fashion if 
we had them, or if we had had them in season. 



Keeping Silence. 

It is a question whether these views are not better hidden in the depths 
of our own consciousness than given to the world of friends and neighbors. 
They certainly do no good to ourselves, to the children, or to the parents of 
the children. On the contrary, the expression of them only serves to exas- 
perate the parents, and to irritate ourselves to still further expression, till one 
listening would suppose from our conversation that all the children we knew 
were candidates for the gallows. The encouragement of these views may 
have, besides, a hardening and injurious effect upon ourselves, which would 
be a pity, when they arise from so evident a desire to improve humanity, for 
they must lead us all the time into the habit of seeing more evil than good — a 
habit whose aim is easily transferable to objects of more advanced years and 
equal terms, and they must cause us to yield as unlovely an appearance as 
those do who do not care for children at all, good or bad, and do not criticise 
their behavior, not from any want of hostility, but from complete indiffer- 
ence; people to whom children are like flies and night-moths, evils to be en- 




THE OPENING SOUL OF CHILDHOOD. 



(319) 



3 2o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

dured, since there is no way of being rid of them if the lamps are lighted. 
For our own sakes, then, as well as theirs, if we can not praise them, it 
might be well to pause before letting ourselves get into the habit of condemn- 
ing other people's children. 

Yet in some respects, if we make no loud expression of it, this critical 
mood of mind may serve our own mere personal comfort in the long run as 
well as another which is quite at variance with it; for if in the other, or coun- 
terpart of it, we might be of some benefit to the little people, it is usually at 
considerable cost to ourselves. It is then not the case of condemning, but of 
loving other people's children too much. Of course there is no such thing as 
too much love in the world, and, if there were, few children are in the receipt 
of too much of it; it is not often that they are injured by its possession so 
much as by its lack. There is love, to be sure, that does them more harm 
than good ; the love that follows them after parental correction and tries to 
soften the effect of it, for instance — a poor sort of love, more often self-love 
than pure love of the little culprit for whose better good the correction was 
administered. But the love of self-sacrifice that forgets itself in the child, 
the love of effort that takes trouble for it, remembers that the atmosphere of 
childhood is carried along to make the whole atmosphere and temperament of 
later life, and sees to it that it shall be a roseate one; the love of patience, 
that stops to think of the reason why before saying nay, and strains a point 
against the nay; that uses all preventive power to hinder wrong-doing or temp- 
tation to wrong-doing, instead of reserving itself to punish wrong-doing 
when done — that love, indeed, can not exist in too great quantity or force. 
Yet that is for the child ; for ourselves, at first glance, there would seem to be 
no question that there is such a thing as giving too much love to other 
people's children for our own selfish ease. Our love may help to make the 
way smooth for them, but how is it going to work with us? It is an ignoble 
way of feeling, it must be admitted, as all views are that dwell simply on the 
light cast on our own future; but there are laws of self-preservation, and if 
there is no instinct to warn us, then experience must discover that whatever 
we do for other people's children we must do for love of them, and not for 
love of ourselves, for in the end the likelihood is that we shall be forgotten in 
the matter, and our love return upon us in bitterness. 

Of course we are not speaking of simple liking and pleasant sufferance, 
but of the intense and yearning affection that the lonely heart extends to clasp 
round the little child in the house, in the family, or in the neighborhood. 
Yet with all that yearning affection, one to whom the child does not belong 
will have, as a general thing, reason to figure less and less in the life and thus 
in the thoughts of that child as the years pass, till one dwindles at first into 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



321 




NECESSARY THAT THE LITTLE THINGS SHOULD BE MADE HAPPY. 

insufficiency and then into forgetfulness and the oblivion of all but temporary- 
presence. Nor does one always have to wait long for that fate — which, if 
possibly it may not come at all, just as possibly is sure to come — for no sooner 
may we have poured out the fullness of our tenderness about it, and made 
the child a part of our heart's blood, than the owners of it can take it from 
our sight and grasp, and put seas and continents and lifetimes between us. 
It had become all but our own child, and is snatched out of our arms; and, 



322 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

so far as we are affected it is in its grave, for it is dead to us in just the de- 
gree that the unloving, the indifferent, the disliking, or the cruel parent 
chooses. 

What are we to do, then? — love nobody's children? It would be a dreary 
•world for most of us in that case and a hard one for all the little people who 
are helped along their way by love, no matter whose. It is a necessity of 
some natures to love that would leave a great gap in life if unsatisfied, and if 
they have not one thing, they will have another, and will give the love that 
should have made the wilderness blossom like a rose for some child to weeds 
and stocks and stones, or what amounts to the same thing. 

Peeling with the poet, however, that it is 

"Better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all," 

it would seem, on the whole, the best thing even for ourselves, and our own 
selfish ease ultimately, to forget self in the affair, and love other people's 
children wherever we find them, since one is so much the happier for loving, 
for having loved, for having love to remember, and since our small quantity 
of love may do its share in the elevation of all the world, however slight that 
share. It may give us more real happiness to close our eyes to those things 
in children which show that they belong to an imperfect race, and to take our 
draught of the infinite pleasure of loving as we go. And perhaps even that 
love may be retroactive in the end, nothing being lost in the universe, and 
soften the hearts of those round whom it was shed ; and as the dreaded and 
fateful years go by, these so loved children will look back with love as we 
have looked forward with it, and feel for the old all that indiscriminate ten- 
derness which we have felt for the young, and we ourselves come in for our 
portion. 

Amusing the Small People. 

- But much of the annoyance that other people's children give the sojourner 
and wayfarer in the house might be hindered by that person's taking a little 
pains to give them amusement or entertaining instruction. 

If, for instance, the guest should take out some drawing materials, how 
soon would every noisy child become a quiet spectator of the magic of the 
working fingers. And still greater quiet may be evoked by giving these 
children paper, or cardboard, with pencils, and showing them how to use the 
new tools. Many people have a notion that it is useless to instruct a child in 
any art for which no particular talent has been shown — the art of drawing for 
example. But every child, no matter in what condition, even the child of 




LOVE OF THE CHILD FOR DRAWING. 



(323) 



3 2 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the savage, loves to make a picture. To these unbelievers unless the child is 
found making his own colors, and cutting hairs from the cat's tail for his 
brushes, after the fashion of Benjamin West, and securing wonderful effects 
with chalk and blackboard, red lead and barn door, it will not seem worth 
while to cultivate his talent ; and even if it should seem worth while then, it 
will be thought it can be done only by means of a teacher who is himself an 
artist. 



With Pencil and Paper. 

But in reality it is well to teach every child certain of the rudiments 
of the various arts, and the very effort may burst the shell inclosing the germ 
of some capacity for them, especially in this very matter of drawing, since an 
impulse toward the imitation of shapes, the representation of outlines, and 
the expression of thoughts by means of a picture, is instinctive with us all, 
and an inheritance from the primitive man, whose only writing it was; and 
it is a further whim of ours that, strange as it may at first appear, a great 
deal of preliminary instruction may be given by the mother or teacher who 
can not herself, perhaps, draw either straight line or circle. Every child has 
some inclination in this direction ; the margins of all his school books are 
scratched over with his favorite designs, and if he has been so fortunate as to 
possess a shilling box of colors, the pages of his atlas and of his history bear 
witness to his aspiration, and perhaps not only to his aspiration, for it is to be 
doubted if Turner's "Carthage" ever gave the artist such joy as the well- 
daubed prints of the "Landing of the Pilgrims," or "Georgian Girls in the 
Slave Market," in the geography book, have given to most of us in our child- 
hood. It is no instruction, now, to take the pencil and paper and draw the 
line for the child to see and then to copy; he would be copying the line, not 
representing the object to be drawn. But it is real instruction to make the 
child actually see the object, and then set down on paper the lines that answer 
to what he sees. William Hunt used to say that the reason we do not draw 
an object correctly is because we do not see it correctly, or see it but partially; 
we think we see it, and see the whole of it; but if we do, there is nothing in 
the world to hinder our setting down its fac-simile. And thus the first thing 
to do is to teach the child to see, to see shape, relation of lines, shadow, mass, 
relief, dwelling first upon proportions and not till afterward on details. All 
that can be done before the child has taken a pencil in hand, and his eye may 
be in process of training a long time first, and a long time afterward, even 
while he is practicing on simple strokes and free lines before an object is put 
up for him to copy, but when his eye is somewhat trained, and one is satis- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 



325 




MONUMENT AT NEW PLYMOUTH TO THE 
PILGRIM FATHERS. 

fied that he has seen the shape of a 
thing, its projection and its proportion, 
and its light and shade, there is no reason why he should not represent it if 
there is any skill in his fingers, and he then will learn by his mistakes, each 
one of which to the right gazer is a step on the upward ladder. There are 
some, it is to be acknowledged, who have no finger knack, who can but copy, 
and that laboriously, by line and rule, for whom form has no attraction, who 
can not interpret color in black and white, and can not be drilled into the ap- 
preciation of masses and values; who, caught early, maybe enlightened to 
some extent only sufficient to show the futility of the effort so far as any great 
results are concerned , yet doubtless the instruction relative to shape, propor- 
tion, and shade has opened their eyes to what would never have been seen by 
them without it, while within a limited degree the effort to do more has been 
of real benefit 

Whether or not one is going to make pictures that will stir the heart with 
dreams of beauty, and live when the hand that created them is dust, it is ex- 
ceedingly desirable from a utilitarian point of view, that one should be led to 



326 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

look carefully and see clearly, leaving- imagination out of the question. A 
drawing is but a report of what one sees, hand and eye working together; if 
one can execute it, so much the better; but if that is not to be, even the 
verbal report will be the more accurate for any such early training as may 
have been given to the eye. Just as a matter of business the advantage of 
the instruction is easily seen ; the traveler, whose eye has been early taught 
its functions and who would write the story of his sight-seeing, needing no 
other hand than his own to illustrate his work, doubles his profits ; and if un- 
able to do so much as that, is yet able to write with a sharpness of outline 
that bites into the memory, while the report of the traveler who sees all things 
but vaguely and pleasantly is blurred and forgotten ; and so of the mecha- 
nician who needs no duller brain with apter fingers to stand between him and 
the model of his machine, and is able to sketch his own ideas as they come to 
him; of the naturalist whose specimens can not evade his pencil and vanish 
altogether, and of countless others. Thus in the light of the relations of 
money-getting, of science, of convenience, apart from any considerations of a 
possible genius to be developed, of a talent not to be wrapped in a napkin, it 
were well to give every child instruction in the art of drawing, encourage- 
ment to his endeavors, and praise to his success ; not that unjust and indis- 
criminate praise which, not being deserved, makes a fool of one, but that 
praise which obliges a person to live up to its standard, remembering the 
while if the talent really exists, it is there for a purpose and to be fostered 
toward an end, and that, not existing, it would be a forgery upon nature to 
pretend that it was there. 

But besides the pictorial way, there is many another fashion in which the 
children can be beguiled from noise and mischief. Let the person who wishes 
to bring peace out of their little pandemonium provide herself with a black- 
board, easily procurable anywhere, and provide the children with slates, and 
tell them they are going to have a play with the round world on which they 
live. 



A New Game. 

Every one remembers the tears and struggles which the really simple and 
delightful study of geography used to cost; but there is a way of making it 
a charming amusement. Let our friend in question take chalk crayon and 
make a map of an island on the blackboard, not at all, however, out of his or 
her own head, but according to the instructions the children shall give. This 
map is then to be transferred from the blackboard to the slates. It was easy 
enough to measure the table by a chalk and string, and order a line of that 






STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 



327 





«3& 



"^W 





A WAY OF MAKING IT A CHARMING AMUSEMENT. 



length to be measured and drawn on the board ; but it is a different thing to 
transfer that line to their slates, and thus learn at once the significance of the 
* 'scale." This done at last, though, a map of the school-room is made; then 
one of the way to school, with the streets and paths diverging from it. From 
this arises the necessity of knowing the points of the compass — nothing being 
taught till its need is felt — and the instruction is given in a calisthenic exer- 



328 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

cise, in which the children are formed in a hollow square, facing outward, 
and the sides of the square are marched to their respective points till they are 
understood and remembered, upon which their application to the map on the 
board is mere play. When sufficient elementary knowledge has thus been 
acquired, intelligence is called more positively into play, and the children are 
told, for instance, as oneway of doing this, that they may colonize an island. 
A rough sketch, a sort of land in the distance, being made on the board, 
every point in the shape of the island is left to be arranged by the children, 
who are to give reasons for their decisions. Some would have it a smooth 
plain, such as a hoop could be trundled on all day; some are for mountains 
and adventures. Mountains carry the day, and determine the nature of the 
shores. The reason assigned for the choice of mountains is that they are 
places for mines ; iron and copper, if not silver and gold, will be wanted in 
the colony — mines will afford them ; pasturage will be wanted for cattle, too 
— the mountain-sides will give it; rain will be wanted — the mountain-tops 
arrest the clouds and produce it ; lastly, as the teacher suggests, rivers will be 
wanted. Shall the rivers flow from the sea into the mountains? Criticism 
is invited. Who ever heard of water's running up hill? The teacher draws 
a river, starting nowhere in particular and going anywhere in general, and 
requires the pupils to say why it is not right, till they see that nature does 
nothing at haphazard ; and rivers, as well as other things, always run from 
some cause to some end, so that in this island they must rise among the 
hills in the springs that the rains and vapors make and swell, and then flow 
downward to their outlet where they feed the sea. And here, if the teacher 
is able, a digression explains the dead rivers of California and the rivers lost 
upon the desert. But why do they want rivers at all on the island ? For 
roads, one says; for fishing, says another; to drain the lands; to water them; 
to turn wheels ; to carry merchandise. As voice after voice resounds, a zest 
springs up, till the scene is as eager, if not as clamorous, as the gold room. 
And what kind of rivers is wanted for these things? is next asked. For car-' 
rying merchandise, let us say. A stream full of eddies and rapids that a 
vessel must skirt and struggle with, or a deep and quiet one that upbuoys the 
vessel which the wind carries along? And for turning wheels — shall it be a 
slow and sluggish current, or a swift one full of falls ? All these things hav- 
ing been settled, the map of the island drawn in a satisfactory manner, and 
the colony being supposed to be on the way to it, the teacher asks if it is de- 
sirable to plant the colony in the interior or on the sea-shore; and the sub- 
ject being well weighed, and the opposing reasons given, it is resolved to 
have it on the sea-shore, on account of the unexplored and uncleared nature 
of the interior, and from considerations of safety and of accessibility — all of 



STEPPING STOXES TO HAPPINESS. 329 

whicn the children appreciate quite as much as they would the exploits of 
Hans or the escapes of Gretchen in their story-books. In this method the 
colony being established, so far as its geographical condition is concerned, 
it is proposed to send off a second colony to a point farther in the interior. 
Shall they strike out at a venture? Follow the river, cries one. Follow the 
river, by all means, and have your way open behind you. But how far? — to 
the source? — to the falls? To the falls. There they are, to move machinery, 
to saw lumber, to grind corn ; ships can go up no farther ; the tide rises on 
farther. The falls, then, are at the head of tide-water. 



Another Game. 

Sometimes this kind of exercise alternates with one which affords as much 
pleasure as the old game of "Dr. Busby." This is a game played with cards, 
evenly distributed, and on the back of each of which is written the name of a 
town or city, and on the face, in double rows, a statement of the usual imports 
and exports of the place. Any one can prepare these cards by the help of a 
school gazetteer. The scholar who begins the game, examining the cards 
allotted, finds that Rio Janeiro, it may be, has rose-wood and diamonds and 
tapioca to export, with other tropical staples, and is in sore need of linen for 
her ladies, cotton goods for her slaves, cordage for her ships, and straightway 
demands these articles. Liverpool can furnish them, and take Rio Janeiro's 
goods in payment. If, then, the scholar having the card Liverpool does not 
immediately cry "Here!" the Rio Janeiro merchant can take that card with- 
out further ado. If, however, the possessor of it does cry "Here!" then Rio 
Janeiro can not take it unless able to give its name — Liverpool. But suppos- 
ing it taken, the Rio Janeiro merchant then looks at the Liverpool card and 
sees hardware to spare there, and cutlery and cotton goods; an immense busi- 
ness to be done, in short, in all sorts of exports and imports; and if Monrovia, 
glistening like the lady in the dentist's chair with gold, gums, and ivory, 
does not answer at the call for them, or for palm-oil and feathers and spices, 
then Monrovia also goes to swell the stock of the first merchant. But if, on 
the contrary, Rio Janeiro, having asked for the Liverpool goods, or for the 
Monrovian or other, can not give the name of the place furnishing them — 
Liverpool or Monrovia, or as the case may be — then the Rio Janeiro card is 
forfeited to the owner of the card with that place on the back, who then pro- 
ceeds to make exchanges until brought up with some round turn which affords 
opportunity to the next. 

Thus a knowledge of the world and of its balances and counterbalances 
is gained that books could hardly teach, and that is usually only half learned 
in the maturer life of the man of business. It is play that takes the place of 



33o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

experience; and not only have the thought-producing qualities been early- 
strengthened and ripened for service, but the little people have had almost 
as much pleasure as if they had gone campaigning and playing pirate, and 
peace has reigned where they made racket and riot before. 

It is only a boy that needs the best of interest and amusement at home 
that can furnish such a record of misdeeds, of good inclinations and bad re- 
sults as Laddy did when all unintentionally he played the burglar himself. 



The Story of Laddy's Burglar. 

The great shining wheel, shod with silence and swiftness, sweeping on. 
like a spirit — a bicycle — was that which, of all created things, Laddy longed 
for most. He saw the club roll by, he heard their warning bells tinkle like 
drops of sweetest sound, he saw their tiny red lights flashing in the dark, and 
his soul was full of desire for this steed which bears one as the outspread 
wings of the Afrite Danhash carried Badoura to Camaralzaman, a sort of visi- 
ble whirlwind. For Laddy to see one of these lofty riders on his giant wheel, 
whose spokes, now viewless with motion, now dazzling as the sun's rays, 
seemed to be parts of the living thing, here slipping out of sight along the 
road, here mounting a hill and outlined on the sky, was to experience the. 
same ecstasy of pleasure that you or I might have over a picture or a poem. 
And he had made up his mind to become, by hook or by crook, chiefly crook, 
just such a poem himself, if his father, who could amply afford it, would lis- 
ten to reason and buy a bicycle. Grass never grew under Laddy's feet, es- 
pecially in the winter, and having mastered the unruly creature, by dint of 
hiring and borrowing, he had never lost a chance of presenting to his father 
such considerations as his tireless running of errands, and general good be- 
havior in the family, to the effect that he had fairly earned his gratification. 

Laddy felt himself a very important member of the family, and had no 
more conception of his real standing there than many of us have who, half 
unconsciously, wonder how the world would get on without us. It was a. 
jolly family, on the whole, that which was thus indebted to him, and it was. 
such a numerous one, that it could hardly have experienced stagnation had 
there been no Laddy. There were a father and mother and grandmother, of 
course ; it would have been a queer family that did not begin with those. 
And then there was a great-grandmother, too — and it was not every family 
that had a great-grandmother, if she was so disabled that she could neither 
speak nor move, but only sit all day in her chair and look about her with a 
pair of little sunken eyes, that blinked as the stars blink in heaven, and gave; 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 



33* 




HE SAW THE CLUB ROLL BY. 



you the idea of her belonging already to some other world than this. And 
then there was Aunt Mat, who did everything for everybody ; and all the serv- 
ants, particularly Michael; and the three older sisters and their two brothers; 
and the half dozen children, more or less, of the younger brood, who made 
noise enough for all the children that followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin. 
For when Sacie was not tittering, Katharine was singing, or Lucy was 
bawling, or Tom was whistling, or Johnny was playing his jews-harp, or they 
were all shouting — Laddy's shout being a roar. They banged on the piano, 
tramped up the stairs, slid down the banister, and would perhaps have swung 
on the chandeliers if they could have reached them. And every little while 
there was a fearful agitation all over the place, for Laddy was in the river, or 
Johnny was being brought out of the river, or the whole crew of them, with 
Tom for captain, were adrift upon the river. The elder sisters painted and 
embroidered and practiced, and went driving, and young Sylvester came to 



33 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

see them — came very often, by the way, and stayed very long, and always 
took Sophy down to the gate with him. Sometimes Rosy and Katharine were 
found rendered useless by meddling with the clay of which the three elder 
sisters had been moulding jars and vases ; or Sacie and Lucy might be seen 
smeared from ear to ear with Laura's water-colors, or with their gowns sewed 
up in Eleanor's flosses and crewels; or half of Sophia's music would have 
been taken to make Johnny's kite, which had ended by falling into the water 
and going out to the sea. Yes, it was a jolly family, Laddy thought; es- 
pecially when time came toward Christmas and Aunt Mat was helping the 
kitchen-girl pick over currants and giving any loiterer a good handful, and 
grandmother was showing them how to make sausage meat, and Laura, 
streaked with chrome yellow from top-knot to shoestring, was learning the 
mystery of squash pies, and the little people were allowed to slice the citron, 
and everybody was busy with a secret.' Nothing could be more to Laddy's 
mind than this state of affairs, unless it was the building of the Tower of 
Babel. He could think of but one thing possible in the way of making life 
still livelier, and that was possession of the bicycle which he had told every- 
body was to be his share of the Christmasing, and which he meant to ride 
down the front stairs, if not the banisters! "I like to see things fly round!" 
said Laddy, leaving one to guess whether he meant things in general, or 
only the bicycle. His mother used to say that it was no wonder she was ill; 
the wonder was that anybody was well in that house. 

I suppose it is to be admitted, before going further, that Laddy was the 
Dad boy of the family. Yet he was a taking little scamp, with the honest 
wide blue eyes in his sunburned face — a face where no amount of tan could 
obliterate a swarm of dimples that made his smile as sweet as honey. For 
all that, no one loved a bit of roguery so well as Laddy did. It was he that 
tied Lucy's and Sadie's long braids together, so that when they rose to go 
different ways he might enjoy the consequences. It was he that made 
"apple-pie" of Johnny's sheets and seasoned it with red pepper. It was he 
that scared the whole parlor by coming down with a candle in his hand and 
beginning to climb the mantel-shelf as if preparatory to crawling on the ceil- 
ing like a fly, walking in his sleep when he was really wide-awake, and laugh- 
ing so gayly and sweetly when, like a bottle of medicine he was taken and 
shaken, that nobody could be very angry with him. It was he that emptied 
Rosy's doll of its stuffing and filled the body with red-cedar sawdust, leaving 
a little crack in one arm so that when Rosy saw the red sawdust trickling out 
she really thought her doll was bleeding to death. It was he that tied all the 
bells in the house with one string, and in the middle of the night woke all the 
sleepers with their furious ringing. And, in general, one might say it was he 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 333 

that cried peace, peace, when there was no peace! And there was nobody like 
Laddy for getting out of a scrape. He never looked guilty. When on Sun- 
day he was bringing the pot of baked beans, suspended on a string, from the 
baker's, and met the people going to church, he accidentally hit the pot against 
a lamp-post, and knocked out its bottom, so that the steaming beans poured 
in a mortifying mess over the sidewalk — mortifying to any one but Laddy; 
but Laddy never once glanced down at the ruin; he simply opened his fist and 
dropped the string and passed on as if they were anybody's beans but his; 
he had nothing to do with them, and didn't know there was such a thing 
as a baked bean in the world, in fact. Ex pede Herculem. 

Perhaps the worst thing Laddy ever did was But I hesitate to tell 

you. It really was too shocking. Still, I don't know — if you will promise 
never to speak of it — and then I hardly think he realized what he was doing. 
If he and Johnny had not been left alone that day — but they were alone with 
great-grandmother, and had been told to take care of her, and see that she 
didn't fall into the fire, till grandmother came back. Grandmother herself 
seemed almost a young girl in comparison with poor old great-grandmother, 
who never stirred from the moment she was put into her arm-chair in the 
morning till she was taken out of it at night. Laddy sat looking at her with 
I know not what strange fancies flitting through his mind. Possibly there 
came over him such a sensation as one might have when looking down the 
crater of a burned-out volcano, or over a picture where the painting had been 
wiped out. For all at once he whispered to Johnny, " Larks, Johnny, larks! 
let's do it!" How far the little wretches would have gone in their wicked 
work nobody knows ; for they were interrupted by grandmother, who had 
thought matters were too quiet to be wholesome in there, and who seized 
them both and shook them till they did not know whether they were on this 
star or on several others. And then the little torments ran back to their 
mother at last, saying they couldn't stay with great-grandmother any longer, 
because grandmother was so cross! Laddy was a good deal younger then 
than at this present writing, but I am afraid he had some reprehensible be- 
ginnings in him. 

' Yet, after all, I suppose I could find as many good things to tell ot him. 
I remember that once he gave his own shoes to a beggar, and would have 
gone barefooted all summer if he had not known of a pair of Tom's that 
fitted him ; he was always polite to the cook, and she, at any rate, did not 
believe it had anything to do with sly turnovers now and then ; he never 
robbed birds' nests — he had business with his marbles, indeed, at birds'-nest- 
ing time; he never called a boy names behind his back, and he always gave 
away the core. Tn spite of everything, he was an affectionate little fellow, 



334 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

and loved his people as much as he tormented them. If his mother sternly 
called him "Lawrence!" it hurt him more than a whipping from his father 
did. 

Laddy had been busy several weeks with chips and tools, frequently run- 
ning in from his place of seclusion to ask on what day of the month Christmas 
came this year, and forgetting again as soon as he was told. He had been 
fashioning a foot-rest for great-grandmother, having often exercised himself, 
since the enormity of his intended behavior on a certain previous occasion had 
been felt, in doing one little odd turn and another for the poor old lady's 
comfort. Now, by the help of the lathe, bright-headed tacks and varnish, he 
had succeeded in quite an effective bit of work. With his head first on this 
side and then on that, he contemplated it in satisfaction, as he thought of poor 
old great-grandmother's tired feet resting on its soft cushion, whose down he 
had himself plucked, last summer on the farm, from under the wings of the 
old gander, at the imminent risk of his life; and he found something a little 
touching in the contrast between the rest of this cushion and the soul of speed 
and motion in the bicycle for which he had such a raging desire. Bobbins, 
and sheaths, and various other small wooden trifles had his carpentry devised 
for the rest, and he only finished the last as the girls were hanging up the 
green and the bells were ringing for Christmas Eve. Having deposited his 
little accumulation in safe hiding, he went to bed, answering questions as to 
his gifts in rather surly fashion, in order to avoid having more of them to 
answer, and waited breathlessly, till every one in the house should be asleep, 
that he might steal down secretly and dispose of them among the array of the 
other gifts. 

It had seemed to Laddy as if that Christmas Eve would never come. He 
had told his mother that he wanted new skates; and to his father he had been 
eloquent on the charms of that or any other bicycle. Grandmother would 
probably give him a little purse of money — and he wanted money sadly; 
Johnny, he knew pretty certainly, was going to give him his ball; and Rosy, 
and Lucy, and Sacie, and Katharine, had united their funds toward a knife 
with a pair of scissors at one end. What Tom had in store for him, what 
Laura and Eleanor and Sophia, not to speak of his grown-up and prospering 
brothers Will and Harry, had prepared for him, he did not venture to imagine 
— something very desirable without a doubt, for when Christmas came Laddy 
knew that all his sins were condoned and forgotten. 

How long it took that red sunset to fade into orange over the snow! 
How slow the stars were about coming out, how long the folks were about 
getting through tea, and what a tittering fracas Katharine and Lucy and the 
rest of them had to make in putting their paper parcels in convenient places 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



\35 




for their elders to 
distribute by direc- 
tion ! What fools 
girls were ! And 
when up-stairs at 
length, what a 
splashing and chat- 
tering, what danc- 
ing about from 
room to room of the 
little night-gowned 
figures, and what 
choruses of glad 
giggles about noth- 
ing, till the hush 
of heavily-breath- 
ing slumber came 
and found him still 
waiting, waiting 
for the elder people 
to seek their sleep 
in turn. He watch- 
ed the stars through 
the uncurtained 
window while he 
tried to keep his 
eyes open; they 
seemed to get 
caught in the huge 
pine boughs, and to 
make thin streams 
of white fire there; 
then came an aurora 
borealis, like a web of white gauze burning and shaking over the whole 
heavens; he thought of the dreams stepping about from pillow to pillow, and 
he was pretty sure that he had been asleep himself when he started with a ray 
of the moon in his face, to find the house so still that it was plain everybody, 
young and old, were in what he called the arms of Murphy. 

Making quite sure of it, Laddy slipped out of bed, and gathered his foot- 
rest, and bobbins, and knitting sheaths, and brackets, and their remainder, 



LADDY SLIPPED OUT OF BED. 



336 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

into his arms, and tiptoed down the thickly carpeted stairs to the sitting- 
room, where everything else was already in place and waiting for the morn- 
ing 

And what a scene it was! The fire was out upon the hearth, the fire that 
it was Michael's pride to build every morning, and the bulging stockings 
hung from the nails driven into a long board laid upon the mantel-shelf. 
Laddy knew of old that there were only jokes in the stockings, the candy 
mouse, the toy fiddle, the china dog. The real presents were laid out on 
tables at either side of the chimney place; Aunt Mat had seen to it all. There 
was the silver cream jug that mamma had wanted when these new aesthetic 
things made her tired of her old silver; there were the engraved onyx but- 
tons for papa from the big boys, and the driving blanket, wrought by the 
fingers of the older girls; there was the sealskin sacquethat Eleanor had been 
sighing for ever since he could recollect, and that now everybody had joined 
in giving her; and the brooch for grandmother of a braid of gray hair set in 
seed pearls; and there was Rosy's new doll, as big as she was; and a fur cap, 
yes, a fur cap for himself, for if L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e didn't spell Laddy, what did 
it spell ? And there were some gold bangles for Laura — only Will and Harry 
could afford to make presents like that — he should himself, some day. And 
a lace-pin in the shape of a fan, made of something like sky-blue sealing-wax 
— Laddy was not acquainted with turquoises — for Sophia; and what was this 
for Sophia, too? A pair of great white diamond ear-rings, winking and blaz- 
ing like the sun in the dew. Laddy started back, and then looked again in 
virtuous indignation. Was Sophia engaged to anybody without telling him? 
Was that tall, dark Sylvester fellow coming here to take Sophia away? And 
Sophia was his favorite sister! And here were presents from his people to 
Sophia, as their little labels said — a great pearl ring from the Sylvester 
mother, and a curious piece of paper, folded like his composition on the Four 
Seasons, from the father; he opened it — for he had seen bonds before — a 
United States bond for a thousand dollars. Well, that was a great go! 
Grandmother's gold thimble the smoked pearl pencil-cases, the silver pocket- 
knives, the slippers, and smoking-caps, and afghans, and silk socks, and all 
the rest, fell into insignificance. 

And nobody had told him ! As the thought recurred he began to feel ex- 
ceedingly wide awake; he was of no account at all in the family; even Muff 
and Tippet, the cats, knew more of what was going on. And thinking it 
over he shrank back unconsciously into the yet warm corner of the fireplace, 
where he was quite in shadow, while the great moonbeam that had waked 
him fell into the room and lay over the two tables and all the beautiful ob- 
jects glittering there, struck those stones sparkling like imperishable drops 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 337 

of dew, that pearl white as concentrated moonshine itself, the blood-red 
onyxes, the turquoises, blue as Eleanor's eyes, struck and glorified all that 
store where the love was even more than the treasure. By the merest acci- 
dent, as Laddy looked along this display, his eye fell upon the mirror, and he 
saw the whole thing faintly repeated, with dim colors and dark flashes and 
the hoar frost of the moonshine. And in another moment he had seen some- 
thing else; he had seen the figure, the shadow, the vague outline of a man 
in the doorway! 

Laddy was a born fighter. To spring and grab the poker, and to confront 
the man, crouching, with the mouth of his bag just opened to sweep all the 
precious things into it, took him but an instant. "You clear out!" he cried, 
"just the way you came! Or if I can't kill you myself, I'll make such a noise 
that somebody else will! There 's the man in the house, and my father., and 

my big brothers, and" the fellow, who did not know Laddy had carefully 

closed the door leading from the stairway, lest his own proceedings should be 
heard, had turned and fled without waiting to hear the whole list of his 
enemies; the sight of Laddy, whose voice could raise 'the house, was enemy 
enough. He tried to hit Laddy a clip first, but Laddy dodged it and followed 
him, brandishing his poker with one hand, and tucking up his little night- 
gown with the other, and putting down and hasping after him the window 
through which the burglar leaped. 

Nobody ever felt more like a man than Laddy did at that moment- The 
bed-rooms were quite remote, the inner hall door was closed, and people were 
tired and sleeping soundly, so nobody had heard him, or, if any one had heard 
it was thought he was talking in his sleep, and thus he alone and by himself 
had put a house-breaker to flight! He had put a house-breaker to flight, and 
yet his father would not let him have an air-gun ! He went back to the place 
of the presents, and there they still shone as calmly as if nobody had just 
tried to sweep them into a bag. Somebody would be trying again ; it would 
never be given up so. He would wait a while, and see what would happen. 

What a very imprudent thing it was, after all, to leave such valuables 
unguarded in this way, thought Laddy, as he again surveyed them all. What 
if somebody had stolen them; — it would have been a pretty how d'you do! 
People as thoughtless and careless as this really deserved to lose. But how 
that man ran — just fluking! And Laddy doubled up with silent laughter at 
the recollection. And, meanwhile, across all these reflections and this laugh- 
ing, an awful shadow was stalking, for Laddy, still looking around, was slowly 
coming to a realizing sense of the fact that there was no bicycle anywhere 
leaning up against the wall for him! 

No; no bicycle. After all that he had hinted and spoken outright, and 



33 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

even begged — no bicycle. And then he grew hot all over, and very angry. 
He had never known what it was before to be very angry, it seemed He 
could not have told you whether it was a minute or an hour he stood there 
and ground his teeth, but when he saw more clearly, his mental articulation 
was repeating the last words he had distinctly thought, without acknowledg- 
ing the reason of his anger even in his inner consciousness. Certainly people 
as careless as this deserved to lose. What it anybody — and then an idea 
struck Laddy — what if anybody gave this family a scare, and made them 
think they had lost their Christmasing' For his part he had lost all the 
Christmasing he cared for. 

With Laddy a thing was no sooner said than done There was still five or 
ten minutes of good light from the moon. He remembered that one of the 
old-fashioned white dado panels in the side of the chimney-place was a closet 
opening with a sunken ring, where a hearth-brush and kindlings were once 
kept, although disused now. He went and pulled at the ring. It was so 
long since it had been opened that it stuck, He took the new silver paper 
knife that was to be papa's tomorrow, but which, in Laddy 's mind, was 
nobody's just yet, and ran it along the cracks and pulled again It opened 
with such force as to throw him on his back, although, owing to the spring 
in its hinge, it immediately shut again. But it had disclosed the most charm- 
ing hiding-place in the world — all one side of it shelves made by the receding 
brick-work of the chimney-pier. Laddy did not lose a moment in hesitation, 
but setting it open again, he was scarcely longer than it takes to tell of it in 
transferring to this receptacle every article from the two tables, and every 
stocking from the mantel, woefully disturbed the while lest the clinking of sil- 
ver and gold and glass and china should betray him. 

At last it was done, although not quite to his satisfaction. He was afraid 
lest a scrap of lace, a thread of Kensington work, should protrude and tell the 
secret; the last ray of the moon had gone, and in the gloom he had to feel 
rather than see. He got farther into the closet than he knew, in arranging 
matters, and then his movement happening to push away the little prop that 
had kept the door open, it swung together, and shut him in with all the 
hidden gear and the dark. 

For a moment Laddy felt as if there was no heart in his body He groped 
about, hardly daring to move lest he should break something, and fumbled 
all over the place. There was no handle on the inside of that door, as the 
case is with most closets, and there it was plain he must stay till he was let 
out — unless he hallooed. 

Should he halloo ? What a time it would make if he did! Father and 
mother and the big boys and the little girls would all come rushing down — it 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 339 

would take more than his hallooing to get the big girls out of bed — and 
maybe great-grandmother would have a fit — and then, besides, everybody 
would be sick and cross to-morrow. No, he would wait a little while and see 
what would happen Perhaps Johnny or Tom would be the first to come in 
in the morning, and could let him out and they would enjoy the joke together 
and creep back to bed 

So thinking, Laddy laid his hands on the driving-blanket for his father, 
and wrapped it round himself, for it was none too warm in that closet which, 
besides its other uses, had been part of an old cellar ventilating-flue. A fresh 
sense of injury in relation to the bicycle overcame him, as he folded the 
blanket — his father's pleasure was provided tor. And then he chuckled to 
think how mad the folks would be in the morning 1 But it would do them 
good They wouldn't leave diamonds and pearls, and bonds and sealskins 
and purses of money round in that manner again, with burglars prowling 
about the house! He rolled up his eyes in a little sanctimonious virtue, 
thinking of the lesson he was giving his elders, and saw something overhead 
shining brighter than Sophia's diamonds — a star, like an immense jewel on 
the deep dark-blue velvet of the bit of sky above him, and then he realized 
that the place, running up in a hollow shaft beside the chimney to its top, 
was open to all the winter night, let the opening be ever so narrow, and he 
grew, perhaps, sixty degrees colder in a second Goodness, how cold he was- 
His teeth began to chatter, he felt his throat tickling, his head stuffing, his 
back aching, and he was confident he would have a lung fever before day- 
break. He put his bare feet against the chimney bricks; to be sure there 
was some warmth in those — but what was that in a place open to all oat* 
doors ? For some of the top bricks had fallen, weathering to storms of halt a 
century, and made the hole larger than that crack through which the draught 
originally whistled. And what if it should begin to rain or snow' Laddy, 
in his mind's eye, was already buried in a snow-drift, and he began to tnink 
that he had better make a noise about it He was, perhaps, to be suffocated 
there in a drift that no St, Bernard dogs would ever find, nobody would ever 
know anything about it, and his mother would miss him in the morning — he 
was just on the edge of tears and cries. 

But before the tears could gather and fall, a new thought flashed over 
Laddy. 

What had he done? He had taken all those objects of value and made 
away with them. That was what he had done, and what anybody would say- 
he had done. What difference, to all appearance, would there seem to be be- 
tween him and that other house-breaker ? What if they should hold nim to be 
a thief? The awful thought made his pulse stop, and his feet turn icy cold. 



340 STEPPING. STONES TO HAPPINESS 

The very hair on his head began slowly to rise as he pictured the scene to 
himself, when his father should take him by the shoulder and wheel him 
about to look in his face ; when the constable should spring the handcuffs 
round his wrists, and march him down to the police court with a crowd of 
hooting boys following — and there the terrible old judge would be sitting in 
his chair! Laddy knew just how that court-room looked ; for once, when the 
boys had been nutting in old Jacques's pasture, old Jacques had surprised 
them, and driven them all into town in front of him like a flock of sheep, and 
walked them up into the court-room, seated them on a bench, and left them 
there, cooling their heels, as he had called it, and gradually finding out, 
through their sobs, and gulps, and lamentations, that that was the end of it. 
But remembering his sensations of shame and horror then, Laddy had never 
been able to think of the place since without a shudder. And now if he were 
to be taken there in earnest — for here he was, with all his plunder about him, 
and of course his father, never dreaming that his own boy was the culprit, 
would be having the constables in to survey the scene and discover the thief's 
tracks. And, thereupon, Laddy resolved never to halloo, in fact to die in 
those tracks first! 

As he lay there he saw the slow star overhead swim out of sight ; a little 
thin cloud blew over the darkness; one by one, other stars came and looked 
down at him with their beautiful eyes ; perhaps this last one was a comet 
speeding on her flight, with all her shining films around her — if it was, Laddy 
was the only person who ever saw it, and he did not see it long; for in the 
midst of his doubt, and fear, and misery, haunted by flashes of stars, and 
flashes of Sophia's diamonds, and flashes of the constable's brass buttons, he 
fell asleep. 

How long he slept Laddy had no more means of knowing than if he had 
been a little stowaway in a ship's hold. But all at once he w T oke, woke to 
find himself overwhelmed with a feeling of unutterable horror, he knew not 
why. But as soon as he could collect himself and distinguish one sensation 
from another he was aware of a strange swift crackling sound, like the noise 
made by burning pine kindling-wood. With that, too, came a stifling choking 
smell, a smell of smoke, and a red glare through the mantel chinks. Ah, great 
heavens! the house was on fire, he thought, and he could not get out, and 
nobody knew he was in, and he would be roasted alive, he would be burned 
to death! "Let me out, let me out!" roared Laddy. "Fire! fire! fire!" and 
the sound sank in his throat, and he fainted dead away. 

When Laddy came to himself he was lying on the bed in his own room, 
and the commotion was all over. For a commotion there had been, and a. 
wild one. The screams, the kicks, the smothered cries of "fire!" and 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 341 

Michael's single yell of terror, had brought almost the whole of the house- 
hold down in wrappers and shawls, and anything handy, to behold the stripped 
mantel-shelf and the bare tables, and old Michael, who had kindled the blaze 
■on the sitting-room hearth, as usual every morning before putting on his 
back-log, ignorant that everything was not as it ought to be there, standing 
and holding up both hands, his eyes and mouth wide open, and himself now 
voiceless with fear and amazement. 

The others were not voiceless, however. A clamor that might have 
waked the faint-away rose from nearly a dozen throats ; cries that a burglar 
had been there, that the house had been robbed, that all their presents were 
gone, that the police must be sent for, and suddenly, added to all the rest, 
cries from the mother, who lived in a wild fear that her children would be 
kidnapped, and then a swift calling of their names, and nobody answering to 
Laddy's! By that time, the father had arrived upon the scene, and looked 
about him, and partially begun to comprehend it. Perhaps his comprehen- 
sion was assisted by the sight of Laddy's reels, and bobbins, and brackets in 
a little heap together where Laddy had left them, meaning to put them in 
last of all, perhaps by a tolerably thorough acquaintance with Laddy's pecu- 
liarities 

"There is no burglar in the business," he said calmly, "and there is no 
need of so much noise. This is some of Master Lawrence's work." In spite 
of the wonder and alarm of the moment then, Tom and Johnny could not 
hinder a thrill of pride and envy that shot through them — Laddy to be the 
cause of all this rout! "Now, Michael," said his master, "what is the matter 
with you?" 

"Begorra, sor," said the man, trying to hold his shaking chin on his face, 
"sure it's the ould boy, an' no other, do be in the chimney closet yander!" 

"Humph!" said his master. "The old boy! I shouldn't wonder if it 
was the young one. ' 

And then a broad grin spread over Michael's countenance. "The spal- 
peen himself!" he cried. And he seized the sunken ring and wrenched open 
the door, and there lay the little wretch in his dead swoon among all, those 
gay and precious objects. 

In spite of their consternation and indignation and marveling, one and 
all they could not but commiserate the little fellow there. Indeed, Kathaiine 
and Rosy, unable to understand it now, w r ere loud in their exclamations con- 
cerning the house-breakers who could be so cruel as to take their Laddy and 
shut him in there, while his father lifted him in his arms and carried him 
away. 

And so, as I was saying, when he came to himself Laddy was lying on 



3 4- 7 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the bed in his own room, and his mother was on one side of him with cologne, 
her long black hair streaming around her, and his Aunt Mat on the other side 
with camphor, her nightcap all askew on her head, and grandmother was run- 
ning with hot flannels; and Johnny hung over the footboard, as if he wanted 
to break his neck; and Lucy and Sacie and Katharine and Rosy were huddled 
in a frightened group in the window-seat. Opening his eyes slowly, and 
glancing from one to another, it gradually stole over him, as life stole back to 
him, that the house had not been on fire at all, and he had made a great fool 
of himself. He was sick, dizzy, faint; no drum-sticks, or mince pies, or 
raisins, or cranberry sauce, or plum pudding for him to-day ! He knew just 
what they would do — they would keep him on gruel, perhaps they would give 
him castor oil, and when he got well they would scold him. ''Pretty sort of 
Christmas for a fellow!" wailed Laddy. 

"Oh, he's alive! he's alive!" cried his mother clasping her hands in 
thankfulness. 

"He's breathing!" cried Aunt Mat. 

"I'm talking!" cried Laddy. 

And then, for a minute, the room seemed to turn upside down, whether 
because Johnny turned a somersault, or because Tom came riding in on a 
great silent bicycle that looked to Laddy's eyes, as he lay there on the bed, 
like one of the wheels in Ezekiel that grandmother read about to them on Sun. 
days, sometimes. 

"I don't think you deserve it," said his father, a little severely, following 
Tom in again, while Sophia shook her head at him in the doorway, with the 
diamonds sparkling in her ears. "But I bought it for you — and you have 
been already well punished — and so — as long as it's Christmas" 

"Is it mine?" interrupted Laddy 

"Yours," but I want you to understand that he w r ould not have had it if 
he had been my boy. "Yours," said his father. 

"As long as it's Christmas," repeated Tom, grandly, from his lofty 
perch. 

"Then, Tom," cried Laddy, standing up in bed, "I'll stump you to ride 
down stairs on it ! " 

"I guess he'll live," said his father. 

"And we will have a pretty sort of Christmas, after all," said Laddy. 
"For there really was a burglar, and I really put him to flight. And it was 
mighty careless in you— a-nd now I'll tell you all about it!" 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 343 



CHAPTER THIRTEENTH 



Angels Unawares, 

A happy youth, and their old age 
Is beautiful and free. 

— Wordsworth. 

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
Frosty but kindly. 

— Shakespeare. 

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. 

— Disraeli. 

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, 
And lover's songs be turned to holy psalms; 
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, 
And feed on prayers which are old age's alms. 

— George Peele. 

A lovely lady, garmented in light 
From her own beauty. 

— Shelley. 

She is the lady who breaks bread 

To those who suffer for the want of it. 

— Anon. 

Those graceful acts, 
Those thousand decencies that daily flow 
From all her words and actions. 

— Milton. 

And when a lady's in the case 

You know all other things give place. 

— Gay. 

I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, Hike their delicacy, I like 
their vivacity, and I like their silence. — Dr. Johnson. 

No house or home is quite complete when everything has been done with- 
out that presence in it which redeems the too sordid pursuit of present oppor- 
tunities by the tender touch of the things of the past. " What is home with- 
out a mother ? " the street ballad has it, but just as true and forcible a phrase 
would be, "What is home without a grandmother !" 



344 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Whether it is the brisk and bustling grandmother whose years set lightly, 
and who is more useful than any brownie in the house, or the dear old saint 
whose work is done and who can only sit with folded hands and show us hew 
near heaven is to earth, it is the grandmother that is the real angel in the 
house, and every child of the family thinks so. 

What one boy thought of his grandmother is quite apparent in these lines : 



What a Boy Thought of His Grandmother. 

A stitch is always dropping in the everlasting knitting, 

And the needles that I've threaded, no, you couldn't count to-day; 

And I've hunted for the glasses till I thought my head was splitting, 
When there upon her forehead as calm as clocks they lay. 

I've read to her till I was hoarse, the Psalms and the Epistles, 
When the other boys were burning tar-barrels down the street ; 

And I've stayed and learned my verses when I heard their willow whistles, 
And I've stayed and said my chapter with fire in both my feet. 

And I've had to walk beside her when she went to evening meeting, 

When I wanted to be racing, to be kicking, to be off; 
And I've waited while she gave the folks a word or two of greeting 

First on one foot and the other and most strangled with a cough. 

"You can talk of Young America," I say, "till you are scarlet, 

It's Old America, I say, that has the inside track!" 
Then she raps me with her thimble and calls me a young varlet, 

And then she looks so woe-begone I have to take it back. 

But ! There always is a peppermint or a penny in her pocket — 
There never was a pocket that was half so big and deep — 

And she lets the candle in my room burn way down to the socket, 
While she tews and putters round about till I am sound asleep. 

There's always somebody at home when every one is scattering; 

She spreads the jam upon your bread in a way to make you grow; 
She always takes a fellow's side when every one is battering; 

And when I tear my jacket I know just where to go ! 

And when I've been in swimming after father said I shouldn't, 

And mother has her slipper off, according to the rule, 
It sounds as sweet as silver, the voice that says, "I wouldn't — 

The boy that won't go swimming sucn a day would be a fool !" 

Sometimes there's something in her voice as if she gave a blessing, 
And I look at her a moment and I keep still as a mouse — 

And who she is by this time there is no need of guessing, 

For there's nothing like a grandmother to have about the house. 




THE SWEET SERENITY OF SILVER-HAIRED AGE 



346 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

It becomes us to keep the old in reverence. While they are with us they 
seem to be a barrier against the dark unknown. The day they go it is we that 
take their places, and become in our turn the barrier for those younger than 
we. 

Old Age. 

If we live there is one thing before us all, and that is old age. And yet it 
is strange that what is so universal and so inevitable should be so dreaded, and 
that none of us desire it in the least degree, when we so frequently find it lovely 
in others. Perhaps it is the doubt, the uncertainty, that it will be found as 
lovely in us that makes us postpone it while we may, for " we know what we 
are, but we know not what we shall be." Perhaps it is the eager grasp which 
we are giving to the things of this world that makes us loath to drop them, 
makes us feel it impossible to stand contentedly empty-handed, our eyes dim 
to this world's brightness, and only the light of the city on the other side of the 
dark water shining in our faces. But on how many of the sweet old faces we 
see that calm, white light, till we might almost fancy that their angels are 
holding before them the refulgent crown of their good lives, and that they stand 
under the shelter of heavenly wings ! 

But near as the old must be to the other shores, there is too much of the 
awful and unknown in the thought for familiar use, and it is in relation to this 
life, this stir and strife, that we are the most apt to look at them, and thus there 
is to us much that is ineffably touching about an old man or an old woman who 
has laid down the weapons of the warfare, who sees all for which the struggle 
was made slowly slipping away, and w T ho now is only waiting. Something of 
the innocence and holiness of babyhood gathers about these old people; we feel 
for them a portion of the same tenderness that we do for those who are just 
beginning life, while at the same time we recognize in them already the outline 
of the sacred thing they are presently to become. They are so helpless that 
all our helpfulness springs forth to support them, and are being made so desti- 
tute of those things for which we care the most that all our pity is theirs, too. 

It is not with any selfish comprehension that as they are we, too, shall be, 
in the w r ords of the old epitaph, that we feel thus toward them, but through the 
inherent graciousness and beauty that old age possesses. " There is one glory 
of the sun and another glory of the moon," the apostle says, and the velvet 
skin, the smiles and dimples of youth, do not monopolize beauty so long as the 
sweet serenity of silver-haired age exists. 

It may be that we look upon the old with such a tender and admiring regard 
chiefly because of this serenity — the serenity of abnegation or of conquest; 




THAT TENDERNESS FELT FOR THE OLD. 



(347) 



348 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

we know they have gone through the trial from which we shrink, and that they 
have come out victorious and at rest ; we wonder at them, and think of them in 
some measure as of a superior order of beings. They have surrendered the 
bloom of youth, and all its fresh strength and vigor — the bounding heart, the 
dancing step, the sparkling eye, the quick senses. They have laid their dear 
ones in the dust; they will soon be dust themselves; they know it, and yet they 
smile upon us and go on without shrinking. We might suppose, possibly, that 
-a portion of this serenity was due to duller perceptions, if we did not sometimes 
see it accompanied by power of as vivid emotion as was ever shown by youth, 
by as strong love, as eager kindness, till we are forced to recognize it as an 
aura and emanation of age itself. 



Growing Old Gracefully. 

Still, for all the interest that attaches to age, most of us find it difficult to 
grow old gracefully. The first few whitening threads in our hair amuse us as 
a prank of nature. Other people may grow gray, but in ourselves we feel the 
bubbling of a fountain of inexhaustible youth. We hardly think of those white 
threads as a serious fact, never as spies who have stolen in to possess the land. 
But we have read of certain weeds foreign to a soil that one year appear here 
and there thinly, a struggling outpost, and another year the whole grand army 
has advanced, the possessor is dispossessed, and the weed reigns. And one day 
we are suddenly startled to see that ashes have fallen on our head, that ours is 
the common lot, that age — dark and unlovely it seems then to us, as it did to 
Ossian — has in reality begun. And at the same time, very like, we see the 
wrinkles round the eye, coming so stealthily that we had never suspected them 
till we were used to them; the deepening lines of the forehead; we see that the 
lustre and the smoothness and the roundness of youth are gone. Ashes are on 
our head indeed, and we are inclined to put on sack-cloth, too; for while we 
are still conscious of the buoyancy and hopefulness of youth, we find that we 
have lost its charm, and we cannot so resign it without a struggle; angry w r ith 
our impotence, we declare ourselves old, wear old colors, adopt old ways, in a 
sort of satire upon ourselves, till, before we know it, that buoyancy has gone, 
too ; elasticity has followed ; in the relaxing of our muscles we observe the 
sinking of the eye, the sagging of the cheek, and if there is a sud- 
den revulsion of our methods we do not strive to disguise it ; we 
strive to ignore it, and are resolved to be young in spite of years and fate. We 
scrutinize those, then, who have already suffered this crisis, if, indeed, they 
cared as we have cared, with an ignorant marveling; their peacefulness seems 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



349 




stolidity, their cheer- 
fulness seems but 
submission to the 
inevitable; and per- 
haps out of the dark 
a great helping hand 
reaches forth to give 
us strength, to lead 
us forward till we 
can gild the future 
with faith, and there 
has begun to mingle 
with our wonder a 
sympathy that, if it 
strips away some of 
the mystery from 
hoary eld, gives it a 
more human inter- 
est than we have 
hitherto allotted it; 
and we understand 
how the widowed 
grandmother re- 
lieves her gay days 
in the gayeties of 
her grandchildren, 
understand how she 
beguiles herself 
with knitting and 
netting and all the 
little domestic de- 
tails of the house, 
and we find some- 
thing more pitiable than we found before in the loneliness of the old grand- 
father, whose eyes have failed and whose mate has gone before. 



GAYETIES OF HER GRANDCHILDREN. 



The Satisfactions of Age. 

But age must have some satisfactions of its own, independent of our 
care, or love, or pity, that are a compensation. There is hardly anything, for 



350 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

example, of the uncertain before it. All has been gained or lost — and what has 
been enjoyed is never lost. Sitting in the shadow with its thoughts, muffled 
from the outer world by torpid and weakening nerves, what bright and joyous 
phantasmagoria may move before it ! — the laughing hours of a long-gone 
childhood; the tremors, the assurances, the transports of riper years, when all 
the world seemed made only to bring such happiness about ; the successes of 
later life ! What merry memories and what tender ones blend together ! How 
the forgotten starts to life like the sparks that run along a dying fire ! And 
how, with one foot on heaven's threshold, it lingers to look back and get the 
last drop of the honey here ! 

And yet, full of fascination as the study of old age might be, both intrinsic- 
ally and from constantly approximating interest, there are few who have been 
attracted to make use of it ; philosophy has not concerned itself with it, physi- 
ology has insulted it, sculpture and painting have slighted it, and poetry has 
shuddered away from it. To this day Tithonus stands as a model of misery ; 
and one poet only has, to my mind, touched the matter deeply, for the old 
gypsy who magnetized Browning's duchess to her flight alone seems to appre- 
ciate the whole meaning and purpose of this crown and sum cf existence. 

" So at the last shall come old age, 

Decrepit, as befits that stage; 

How else wouldst thou retire apart 

With the hoarded memories of thy heart, 

And gather all, to the very least, 

Of the fragments of life's e-arlier feast, 

Let fall through eagerness, to find 

The crowning dainties yet behind? 

Ponder on the entire past, 

Laid together thus at last, 

When the twilight helps to fuse 

The first fresh, with the faded hues, 

And the outline of the whole — 

As round eve's shades their frame-work roll — 

Grandlv fronts for once thv soul!" 



The Refinement of Old Age. 

In some manner not easily or entirely comprehensible the aged have 
almost always, or seem to have, a singular refinement of manner and feeling. 
The grandmother, no matter in what condition of life, is felt by those that 
come in contact with her to have that quality about her which is possessed by 
those to whom we apply the term of lady. It is not because she sits still with 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 35 1 

little to do, if that so happens, but because love, suffering-, sacrifice, and per- 
haps the near presence of death, have so refined her and given her those quali- 
ties of ladyhood which are a happiness to all about her and a boon in any 
family. For refinement is a contagious thing, and one lady in a family is apt 
to make another there in the course of time. Few terms, by the way, are so 
misapplied as this pleasure -giving title of "a lady." "Me last mistress was a 
leddy," says scornful Nora; " she niver putt the nose of her intil the kitchen 
door." With Nora, then, the element of ladyhood was the accordance of lib- 
erty to run the wheels of the kitchen without interference. " Mrs. Fitzgerald 
is a raal leddy," cries Bridget, '* she niver asks me to set me hand to a dish on 
the ironing day." With Bridget, then, the element of ladyhood is considera- 
tion for the worker. And Teddy will speak to you of "the lady that do be 
doin' yer washin','' whether through fear of hurting the feeling of the laun- 
dress, or from a desire to assert an equality which you can not stoop to dispute 
but which, not being disputed, he may feel is in a way tacitly established. 

Of course our democratic system and principles of government are respon- 
sible for much of this, Every woman between the Atlantic and the Pacific 
seas has the opportunity of becoming a lady, this technical lady. 



The Term "Lady." 

It is the height of the ambition of the newly arrived peasant ; equal in 
rights before the law, she interprets the law as she would have it, and asserts 
herself equal in all else, the moment that she graduates from shopping at a 
dry-goods store ; and it being in everybody's power to become this lady, she 
considers it an insult to take it for granted that one is any otherwise than all 
she could be. 

The term "lady " had originally a signification that explains something of 
this ambition and pretense. It can claim either of two derivations; the one 
coming from the verb " to lift," meaning that a wife was lifted to her hus- 
band's rank, and in so far as she was made mistress of his house, had received 
a desirable elevation from her "previous condition of servitude." The other 
derivation is from the Anglo-Saxon words that signify the daily delivery of the 
loaf to servants, guests, and beggars, thus implying the features that generally 
distinguish the idea of the lady to the present day — supposed dignity of mar- 
riage or of years, the wealth that makes it possible to dispense the loaf, the 
gentle civility or charity that does dispense it. The recognition of a lady from 
the day in which this custom originated has been as the mistress of a manor, of 
revenues and retainers, one who followed the established manner of the feudal 



35 2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

days in feeding them that hungered. The recognition of a lady now should 
only be changed by the progression of events and ideas, the abandonment of 
all thought of the necessity of manor and revenue, and maintaining only the 
necessity of possession by her of the Christian charities; for she who practices 
the Christian charities, and practices them with reflection, cannot fail to be 
gentle and well bred, and that is the whole of a lady. Certain small conven- 
tionalisms of place or fashion are of no account in the scale; to conceal vexa- 
tion, to guard the unruly member — " for the tongue is a fire " — to give pleas- 
ure, to regard the feelings of others — can a lady do more ? 

One may, perchance, demur a little at this characterization, yet no other is 
at all practicable. To fix education and accomplishment and wealth as the 
criterions of a lady would scarcely be possible, owing to the very various de- 
grees of these qualities, if for our purpose they may so be termed. The wife 
of the merchant prince who is taxed for a hundred millions may not know how 
to make a drawing of her teacup, or how to play a tune on the piano-forte, or 
how to tell a fine poem, a fine picture, a fine sonata, when she reads it, sees it, 
hears it. She may be an upstart, and look down on those less wealthy, and 
rudely show her poor disdain. It is possible that she may be rough and coarse, 
of low taste and ill disposition. We can not make her wealth one of our crite- 
rions. Or, again, it is credible that one may be educated in books to the last 
degree, yet know nothing of good manners; may wipe her pen in her hair and 
her fingers on her gown; may quarrel with her tradesmen, slap her servants* 
faces, insult her neighbors, brawl at her gate, and indulge in such peccadilloes 
as an inherited kleptomania or a spontaneous dipsomania. Her education can 
not be one of our criterions. The woman whose painting hangs on the 
Academy wall may not be worth a farthing in money, but then, in addition, she 
may not know how to sing a stave by note, and may be totally uneducated in 
everything but her special art. Her aptitude in painting can not be one of our 
criterions either. The woman whose accomplishment in music is extraordin- 
ary, who can delight you by the hour with her rendition of the choicest 
morceaux, who, if she appear in concert, will be half hidden from sight with the 
flowers flung for her taking, and whose songs yield a fortune every year, may 
be utterly unlettered, utterly ill-bred, unable to speak her mother-tongue cor- 
rectly, almost ignorant of existence of any other art than her own, a vulgar 
glutton : we can not make her phenomenally sweet voice, her knowledge of 
counterpoint, her accomplishment in music, any criterion of the lady. 

Thus we see that as neither wealth in the one instance, nor education, nor 
genius, nor the natural endowment of a warbling voice cultivated to its utmost, 
is to be admitted as the essential of a lady, something else must be wanted, and 
that something can only be the thorough high-breeding which is measured by 




ljr£.-> 1 j^XL A-M/ » XL. 



,L BRED, AND THAT 15 THE WHOLE LADY. (Sfo) 



354 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the length and breadth of the Golden Rule. To be a lady is not to live an idle 
life and have smooth jeweled hands; for the word lady implies some stage of 
civilization, and a barbarian may lead an idle life and have jeweled hands, and 
nose, too. It is not to trail silks and velvets after one; for a squaw may buy 
silks and velvets, if she will, with her husband's peltry, and can wear the 
imperial furs, since she catches the creatures of the precious skin herself. It 
is not to wear silver moons on one's shoes, as certain of the Romans did who 
wished to claim a preferred gentility. It is not to count earls and princes in 
one's ancestry, and trace the family tree back to the root of sturdy and heroic 
knights, unless their blood has blossomed into noble deeds in us, for otherwise 
we are their reproach, not they our glory; and one may be the descendant of a 
king, and yet sink, as descendants of kings have now and then been known to 
do, into the slums and waste places of society. 

"Christ, wol we claime of him our gentilesse, 
Not of our elders for their old richesse: 
For though they gave us all their heritage 
For which we claime to be of high parage, 
Yet may they not bequethen for no thing 
To none of us their virtuous living 
That made the gentilesse called to be, 
And bade us follow them in such degree. 
And he that wol have prize of his genterie 
— For he was boren of a gentil house, 
And had his elders noble and virtuous, 
A7id rt ill himselven do no gentil dedes 
Nefolne his gentil auncesirie that dead is 
He n' is not gentil, be he duke or erl, 
For vilains sinful dedes make a churl. 
Then cometh our very gentilesse of grace, 
It was no thing bequethed us with our place," 

says old Chaucer. And though he speaks especially of men, a lady is only the 
complement of a gentleman. 

To be a lady, then, it is clear, does not depend on any of these factitious 
circumstances with which we have nothing to do, but entirely on ourselves. 
The woman who does the washing may, indeed, be as much of a lady in some 
respects as the woman who employs her, if, that is, she carries her self-respect 
into her work, and is that gentle thing from which the word gentility was born 
—gentility, which belongs only to those who strive to do what is fit and be- 
coming; and if it is fit and becoming in her to do washing, it then being fit and 
becoming to do it well, in so far as she does it well, in so far she is a lady. Yet 
only so far. Other things than the mere routine performance of a coarse duty 
are requisite in this grand inventory; those gentle manners which offend none; 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 355 

that consideration for the feelings of others which pleases all ; that absence of 
anything which can produce a sentiment of repulsion or of disgust; that sub- 
mission to the fact that the humblest woman in the street is a soul of equal 
value in God's eye. 

One, in short, is the true lady in whom courtesy and tranquillity and trust 
are rightly mingled with discretion, with knowledge, and with the grace of 

God. 

"Wrong dares not in her presence speak. 

Nor spotted thought its tamt disclose 
Under the protest of a cheek 

Outbraggmg Nature's boast, the rose!" 

But be the grandmother as much a lady as you will — she has still — even if 
she has the possibilities of the angel in her — a good deal of the human about 
her also, and she is a little more than mortal if sometimes she does not try to 
impress upon others the advantage of her own experience, She does this more 
especially in the matter of attending to the health of the children, who are her 
idols, and it is a wise mother of those children who can reach the golden mean 
of having them cared for as they should be and at the same time of not dis- 
pleasing the grandmother. 



Ailments in the Family. 

The grandmother who, having brought up a family of her own, thinks her 
knowledge well proved and her ways the right ways, and at every ailment of the 
children would have her advice followed, often without regard to any improve- 
ment that may have taken place in all the years of study, research, and experi- 
ment since her day. And what those years have brought to light is something 
hardly to be reckoned, and far beyond the poor old grandmother's knowledge, 
and almost beyond the appreciation of any but physicians and students them- 
selves. As it is now, when we read of the immense discoveries and inven- 
tions in the practice of medicine, the discrimination and diagnosis of delicate 
differences of kindred disease, the chemical discoveries and consequent applica- 
tion of new remedies, the superb point of skill that surgery has reached, the 
microscopical examination of the germs of various diseases, and new light 
thrown on their pocsible extirpation, the beneficence of anaesthetics, we sorrow 
over the stupidity of those Dark Ages when the leech and the barber were one, 
and the trick of blistering and blood-letting and the administration of dried 
adders and pulverized angle- worms was the height of medical knowledge — 
knowledge that often called in witchcraft and divination to its aid. 

Yet it is but a little while ago that remedies as trifling as those of the Park 



356 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Ages were in vogue among us, and questioned only by those daring skeptics 
who doubted the fact that epidemics, traceable to and explainable by our own 
neglect and filthiness, were visitations of Providence. It is but the other day 
that the gouty were admonished to drink every day for a twelvemonth, a weak 
tea of the leaves of the holy thistle, made palatable by the addition of those of 
angelica — not less wise than the ancient Greek belief that eating ripe blackber- 
ries prevented people from becoming gouty, anyway; and at the same time it 
was held that a hysterical girl was to be cured by spreading her matutinal 
bread and butter with caraway seed, ginger and salt. These ideas, if they really 
reached the dignity of ideas, were hardly to be called improvements upon Hip- 
pocrates' notion that the brain was a large gland which absorbed the spare 
moisture of the body, or Galen's that the soul was composed of three parts, the 
vegetative in the liver, the rational in the brain, and the irascible in the heart. 

There have been dogmas in all ages regarding the things that are to cure 
disease as instantly as the disease comes. It is still held in some of the English 
rural districts that a ring made of a sacramental shilling — that is, a shilling 
given in the alms collected at Communion — will at once cure the epilepsy ; and 
by the same class of people fried mice are held to be a specific for smallpox, 
the more effective specific, too, if the mice are fried alive ; and it is believed 
that the advice of anybody riding on a piebald horse will cure the worst case of 
whooping cough to be had. Mrs. Delany, in 1774, gave in all good faith the 
recipe of sealing a spider into a goose-quill and hanging it round a child's neck 
to cure the ague ; and Dr. Graham in his medical work prescribes spiders' 
webs rolled into pills for intermittent fever. Perhaps some of our travelers 
who suffer from Roman fever — although in this country the same thing is called 
only the democratic " chill " — might try this spider's pill to advantage. Bishop 
Berkeley, who was wise enough to know the direction taken by the star of 
empire, was weak enough to see in tar-water a panacea for every ill ; and for 
the cure of Lord Metcalfe, who died of cancer so late as 1846, a plaster and a 
powder were prescribed by a friend and well-wisher, the chief ingredient in 
which was a portion of a young frog. Yet how can we laugh at these fancies 
or dare to despise them when we condescend to carry a horse chestnut in our 
pocket to ward off the rheumatism ? People who have listened to such non- 
sense have no right to smile even at the Egyptian who regarded the eating of 
a citron the first thing in the morning as an antidote and preventive of every 
sort of poison. 

The truth is that we are all far too prone to dabble in physic without know- 
ing anything about it, and had much rather take and give remedies of our own 
or the next person's conceit than call the doctor, whose business it is to know all 
about it, weakening or exciting ourselves usually in just the wrong way as a 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 357 

result. It might be better for us if we agreed with M. Monthyon, who, being 
forbidden wine in an illness, and prescribed large doses of cold water, returned 
the glass after one sip to his wife, saying, *' Take it, ray dear, and keep it for 
another time ; I have always heard we should not trifle with remedies." The 
French gentleman's precept, if not his practice, would be worth our attention. 

Until our education in pathology is better attended to, it is playing with 
fire for us to undertake to ' 'doctor" ourselves, as the greater number of us are 
fond of doing in our little ailments, and really -rather as if we were glad of the 
opportunity, especially so long as there is a class in the community educated 
for nothing else than to take care of the little ailments with the great ones, and 
much better aware than we are how easily the little become great ones. In- 
deed, apart from direct and immediate safety, it would be better policy for us 
to call a physician in these small matters, because through them the physician 
learns our constitutions and the habits of our systems, and is better able to 
handle for us the larger troubles when they appear. The child taken in the 
night with the deadly chill of scarlet fever is dosed by the frightened mother 
till its power of sustaining itself is gone before the doctor comes, and another, 
seized with internal pains, has by the fondest love and effort a supposed remedy 
sent tearing and ripping a murderous way through its little body that should 
have been left absolutely quiescent. And the instances are multipliable almost 
to infinity where mistaken love has put the sick one beyond help because rely- 
ing too much on family tradition and the wisdom of past generations. 

Still, as the physician can not always be had, and one is loath to call him 
in the night unless the case be extreme, it follows that we shall go on adminis- 
tering the wrong dose, with the best intention and the worst result for some 
time to come. Much of this might be obviated if, instead of a good deal of use- 
less knowledge taught in the schools, and expected to be learned, there were 
taught and obliged to be learned a sufficient preliminary knowledge of physi- 
ology for every girl to know the structure of her frame, and how wonderfully 
she is made. It would seem as if neither man nor woman should venture to 
undertake the management of a household and the rearing of children till they 
know something of what it is they undertake, with such issues of life and death 
in their hands. And whenever this shall be an absolute requirement of early 
education we may rest assured that the health of the community will be on a 
far superior basis to that in which remedies are used ignorantly, according to 
hearsay, or to the misinformed grandmother's well-meant advice, and we 
shall have heard the last of those household remedies, hardly beyond comparison 
with some of which was the former administration of bird-shot to an old per- 
son troubled with "rising of the lights." 

And there is another thing in the way of health on which the grandmother 



35 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

will be very apt to interfere, and that is the amount of sleep the children (and 
for the matter of that the rest of the family) take. Old people, it is well 
known, sleep less than the young do, and it is a foible of theirs to insist that 
the young shall have as little as they find sufficient for themselves. " Early to 
bed and early to rise makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise, " is a distich 
they love to quote, and they are often of the opinion of those people who plume 
themselves upon the fact of their early rising as upon some virtuous achieve- 
ment. 



The Right Sleep. 

One might infer from their conversation and behavior that the taking of a 
sufficient quantity of rest was a sinful indulgence of the senses, and that the 
height of innocence and intellectuality lay in the involuntary nervous restless- 
ness that will not or can not stay at peace, but, like the doubtless good and 
surely disturbing woman in Proverbs, has the maids up in the middle of the 
night for their tasks. All this is disagreeable enough when it occurs among 
individuals having no positive power over each other by which one may be 
deprived of the really needed sleep; but when it occurs among those that have 
either the moral or the material power to direct movements, as between parent 
and child, the old and the young, husband and wife, mistress and servant, the 
thing becomes a tyranny. 

During all the hours of wakefulness the brain is in a constant state of 
activity — for it is impossible to be awake and conscious without thought and 
emotion — and therefore of waste so far as this activity is understood to use the 
substance of the brain. " Its substance," remarks a noted observer, " is con- 
sumed by every thought, by every action of the will, by every sound that is 
heard, by every object that is seen, by every substance that is touched, by every 
odor that is smelled, by every painful or pleasurable sensation, and so each in- 
stant of our lives witnesses the decay of some portion of its mass and the 
formation of new material to take its place. The necessity for sleep is due to 
the fact that during our waking moments the formation of the new substance 
does not go on as rapidly as the decay of the old. The state of comparative re- 
pose which attends upon this condition allows the balance to be restored, and 
hence the feeling of freshness and rejuvenation we experience after a sound 
and healthy sleep. The more active the mind, the greater the necessity for 
sleep, just as with a steamer, the greater the number of revolutions its engines 
makes, the more imperative is the demand for fuel." 

Thus it is apparent that in sleep this waste of the brain is repaired, and 
during sleep, if the brain is at all active, but a small portion of it is so, as any 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 3^ 

one can see by the slight and superficial character of dreams. So long as the 
brain does not feel the strain, one is wakeful and alert; but when repair be- 
comes necessary, it feels the amount of feebleness which makes sleep desirable, 
and produces irritability and torture without it. A person deprived of sleep 
has no resource but those drugs and stimulants and that enfeebled general con- 
dition which are the authors of much disaster, or else insanity in its various 
forms; for when that state appears in which it is impossible to sleep, then the 
overstrained brain is unable to make repairs, and disease is already there or 
impending. 

When it so happens that one individual in all the house wakes betimes, 
either from habit or choice, or because the brain and body do not require so 
much rest as do those of others, what worst despotism could there be than the 
requirement that everybody else under the roof should conform to that stand- 
ard of early rising, and be up and about, whether it is simple misery or not to 
rise just as the last sweet dregs of sleep make the soul heavy and the body a 
weight well-nigh impossible to lift. The hours of mounting morning are de- 
lightful — fresh and bright and dewy, what is there to exceed their cheer? But 
if you are drooping with unrested weariness, it is hard to see the cheer ; and if 
you are worthless before the noon comes because of your early rising, and have 
to pay your way with a nap by the afternoon, what advantage is there in time? 
In truth, nothing that you do all day will be done well, and everything will 
drag, so that the difference in your life's accomplishment, if you rise early or if 
you sleep your sleep out, will be evident to any one that takes the pains to in- 
vestigate, while the difference in your state of feeling does not need to be inves- 
tigated by anybody, but is as apparent to everybody else as it is disagreeable 
to yourself. 

The very aged, as it is well known, do not require so much sleep by a large 
degree as others do, for the less activity of the brain with them, of the nervous 
system, and in fact of the whole system, makes less repair necessary, and thus 
less demand for sleep; and this being so it is odd that they are so inclined to 
make a virtue of the fact, when, in addition, it is true that if they did not rise 
early they would be very uncomfortable in bed. 

But children, on the other hand, require a vast amount of sleep, for in 
their case the constructive processes are lively, and it is a lesson which their 
elders can not too often repeat to themselves, that these little people must be 
let alone till nature dismisses them from the land of dreams back to the world 
of sunbeams. 

Those in middle life, again, save for the exceptional cases, also need sleep 
in greater proportion than when more advanced, although in no such measure 
as children do. But one need only to think of the state of all but perpetual 



360 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

motion in which children's thoughts are, to say nothing of their work of recep- 
tivity when all the world presents itself in its varying phases for the first time 
to their apprehension — to be seen, to be wondered at, to be comprehended, to 
be enjoyed, to be remembered, to be generalized from — to understand that 
both the waste and the repair must be tremendous, and he is ruinously heed- 
less, or else willing to mutilate tne intelligence, who prevents a child from 
getting this needed repair in sleep, simply because it is convenient to have the 
family breakfast together at seven o'clock, or because the school bell rings at 
nine, or because it used to be so in grandmother's day, or for any other 
reason under the sky. As air is free to all, so should sleep be, that equally 
great requisite with air and food, and to deprive one of the due quantity is the 
same thing as to deprive one of food, and is a species of starvation perhaps more 
cruel than another, for it starves the brain and the body, too. " Sleep that knits 
up the raveled sleave of care " is sweet to all, a luxury to some, but to the 
weary and to children it is vital. . And if it werenot vital, is not the world a hard 
place enough to live in ? and have not children who have the rule of three or 
the irregular verbs to learn, under the best of circumstances, a hard time in the 
future ? and is it well to call them back to all this hardness when they are in 
that rosy, dewy, happy world the gates of which are sleep ? 



The Grandmother's Chair. 

But when the grandmothers do not insist upon their too old-fashioned 
recipes in case of illness, and do not demand too early rising on the part of the 
children, and are, in fact, what grandmothers ought to be, what treasures they 
are in a family, especially at the twilight hour ! It is they who have all the 
family traditions and know how to tell them, who keep the genealogical tables, 
and are wise in the family connection to the third and fourth generation. It 
is they who are storehouses of story and of song, song which they sing in 
quavering voices which to the hearers are infinitely sweet ; and it is they who 
recite to us the old ballads and poems which first teach the love of poetry. And 
what greater gift could they give than the joy and comfort that through life 
come with the love of poetry ? We sometimes meet people who tell us they 
have little or no love of poetry; we always think they could have had no grand- 
mothers. 

Delight in Poetry. 

To them the most exquisite images fail to convey an idea, and they see in 
sapphic or lyric nothing but a promiscuous whirl of smooth words, not unpleas- 
ant in their jingle for a little while, but rather tiresome in their monotony after 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 361 

a page or two, while sometimes the finest raptures of the poets seem to be only 
scaling, in their eyes, the heights of absurdity. 

Such people, speaking literally, deserve a vast amount of compassion. 
They are shut out from a literal paradise of sound and sight and fancy, and at 
first glance are even more pitiable than those with no ear for music; for the 
one would appear to be but a defect of the body, the other of the soul. For 
surely they who receive no pleasure from 

"soft Lydian airs 

Married to immoital verse, 

Such as the meeting soul may pierce 

In notes, with many a winding bout 

Of linked sweetness long drawn out. 

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running, 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony" — 

surely they lose a pleasure only less in kind than that lost by those who see no 
beauty in the words that describe those airs, nor in the ideas that they convey. 
Such people should find no charm in that most alluring, most mystical of 
sounds, the airy voice of the echo of the hills, " Sweet queen of parley, daugh- 
ter of the spheres. " 

Poetry is the first blossom of all literature. Long before history w T as ever 
heard of, before philosophy began to think, before fiction had a fancy, the light- 
hearted of the race began to sing. It might seem, then, as if this art had had 
time to come to perfection that the other branches needed generations to attain. 
In fact, it has learned to interpret nature as no other art can yet do. What 
figure-painter, what flesh-painter, what painter of interiors, what prodigal of 
colors can equal the picture that Keats makes of Madeline : 

"A casement high and triple-arched there was, 

All garlanded with carven imageries 

Of fruits and flowers and bunches of knot-grass, 

And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 

Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes 

As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings; 

And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries 

And twilight saints and dim emblazonings, 

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings. 

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast 

As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon; 

Rose-bloom fell on her hands together prest, 

And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 

And on her hair a glory." 



362 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 

What landscape painter could spread more beauty on his labored canvas of 
many feet in size and many months in work than Tennyson has shut into four 

little lines- 

"How faintly flushed., how phantom-fair 
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there 

A thousand shadowy-penciled valleys 
And snowy dells in a golden air!' 1 

What sculptor of marbles of world-wide fame, and for which kings con- 
tend, of Joves and Caesars, can let us see any more statuesque sight than 
Browning gives us when he draws old Hildebrand. 

"See him stand, 
Buttressed upon his mattock, Hildebrand 
Of the huge brain-mask, welded ply oer ply 
As in a forge ; it buries either eye 
White and extinct,, that stupid brow ; teeth clenched 
The neck tight-corded, too. the chin deep-trenched. 
As if a cloud enveloped him, while fought 
Under its shade, grim prizers, thought with thought 
At dead lock : agonizing he, until 
The victor thought leaped radiant up, and Will, 
The slave with folded arms and drooping lids 
They fought for, lean forth, flame-like, as it bids ! " 

And what piper playing with cunning pipes can let us see beauty and 
hear music at one and the same time as Swinburne lets us do in one of the 
verses of "Atalanta " — 

"The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair 

Over her eyebrows, shading her eyes; 
The wild vine, slipping down, leaves bare 

Her bright breast shortening into sighs ; 
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, 
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves 
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 

The wolf that follows, the faun that flies ;" 

or as Dryden does in the sweet falls and returns and chimes ringing through 
every ode he ever wrote; or as Milton causes to move along all his heroic 
measures; as haunts the songs of Shakespeare, as blows like trumpet peels 
through all the Border ballads I 

All these arts — the painter's, the sculptor's, the singer's — the poet com- 
bines in his own, and that all these arts are capable of yielding, provided only 
that his song does not fall upon a deaf ear, that his picture and his carving are 
not set before a blind eye. For in order to gather all the wealth that there is in 
a poem, one must be in some degree a poet one's self; that is, if not an ex- 



\ STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 363 

ecutive poet, as one may term it, an appreciative one. We have to look in a 
mirror to see our own image reflected, and the poet can not paint his picture or 
call up his echo except upon an answering surface. 

Nor is this enjoyment and appreciation of poets altogether a natural gift; 
it is capable of growing from a small germ and enlarging itself to full bounds, 
although undoubtedly the germ there must always be. He who is going to 
love music, hears his mother singing it beside his cradle, till, through sweet 
accustoming and tender memory, the strain becomes a part of his being and 
draws other strains to keep it company; and thus the imaginative faculty of 
the child, together with his love of melody, has usually to be stimulated by 
early usage, in order that this chief of all the pleasures shall be his in its perfec- 
tion by-and-by. 

" Next to the language of poetry," says Willmott, "is the tone of its voice. 
Tt makes love to the ear, and wins it with music. Certain passages possess a 
beauty altogether unconnected with their meaning. The reader is conscious of 
a strange, dreamy sense of enjoyment, as of lying upon warm grass in a June 
evening, while a brook tinkles over stones in the glimmer of trees. Sidney 
records the effect of the old ballad on himself, and Spence informs us that he 
never repeated particular lines of delicate modulation without a shiver in his 
blood not to be expressed. Boyle was conscious of a tremor at the utterance of 
two verses in Lucan, and Derham knew one to have a chill about his head upon 
reading or hearing the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and David's lamenta- 
tion for Jonathan. How deep is the magic of sound may be learned by break- 
ing some sweet verses into prose. The operation has been compared to gather- 
ing dew-drops, which shine like jewels upon the flowers, but run into water in 
the hand. The elements remain, but the sparkle is gone." 

Surely it is the last gift the divine powers can give, this love of poetry. 
They who possess it can be content with little else besides; it can bring palaces 
and the pleasures of palaces into hovels, it can make the Barmecide's feast a 
satisfactory banquet, and can play at ail times the part of fairy godmother to 
any Cinderella's rags. It is, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. 
Those that have loved it it never forsakes. It is eyes to the blind and ears to 
the deaf; it spreads morning and bird-song and flowers and dew on the dark 
field of the sleepless night; it is sunshine in the dreariest day; it lends to the 
old the blush and fire of youth again. Some young savage, blowing through 
his plucked-up reed, may have invented the first instruments of music; some 
idler, scratching the rude outline of another with a chance bit of red ochre on a 
rock may have invented painting; some uncouth genius may have imagined 
the god slumbering in the stone, and have cut him out and set him up to wor- 
ship; all these arts men may have established; but poetry, that enchantment 




364 DRAWING AND SCULPTURE DURING THE PALAEOLITHIC EPOCH. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 365 

where melody flows through all the mould of words, where every word is color 
and every modulation form, where the heart and the soul enter, where the tear 
trembles and the smile kindles — poetry, that union of music and beauty, is the 
gift of the Lord Himself. 

And if the grandmother, when the children cluster about her, has suc- 
ceeded in filling them w r ith the love of this divine gift, this comforter and con- 
soler, she has given them as firm a stepping stone to happiness as they will 
find in purely earthly things — I say earthly, and yet surely it is something close 
upon the heavenly, too. 

But it is not only the children that find happiness in the grandmother; it is 
the grandmother that finds happiness in the children. And how our grand- 
mother found it and made her life a blissful thing when she took the children 
into it, the story of Mrs. Penn instructs us. It is the story of a perpetual 
thanksgiving. 

- 

A Perpetual Thanksgiving. 

It was certainly a dreary house, Mrs. Penn's, and never more so than when 
the autwmn sun sent the shadows of the hills across it in the early afternoon, 
and cast a double gloom throughout the great solitary rooms and the long pas- 
sages. 

The servants went and came noiselessly; no foot in it fell more loudly than 
the autumn leaves, and Mrs. Penn trailed her widow's gowns through its soli- 
tudes, sometimes feeling as if she were buried alive, and with a listlessness that 
said she did not greatly care if she w T ere. 

On the outskirts of the village neighbors were few, and friends came 
rarely. There were almost no outside interests. Mrs. Penn read the books 
that came up from town, and sent the box back and had another, and did some 
endless embroideries. And every morning she opened her eyes with a dull 
sense of oppression and regret that the day was to do over again; and she 
always cried a little at twilight, and said to herself that her husband, who had 
been very much her senior and had indulged her with every desire of her heart, 
would have resented her loneliness and want of happiness. 

The coming of the one daily mail meant but little to her, for her friends 
had their own interests and families ; and, except in the midsummer, when 
the mountains w T ere to be climbed, she had so little to offer them by way of enter- 
tainment that she had long ceased to ask them under her roof ; her few letters 
were spasmodic and brief, and her sole regular correspondent was her husband's 
granddaughter by his first marriage, Eva P.obson, who resided abroad with her 
babies, Mr, Robson having a small consulate and living much too luxuriously, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 




HER FEW LETTERS WERE SPASMODIC AND BRIEF 



as Mrs. Penn thought, on his wife's inheritance from her grandfather. " No, 
Eliza/' said Mrs. Penn, to the person who united in herself the functions of 
friend and lady's maid and housekeeper, and who had come in to see about 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 367 

engaging a certain monstrous bird for dinner six weeks off, the young girl, 
Sally Bowen, who had reared it, being then in the kitchen. " No. What should 
I do with such an affair as that — an overgrown, unnatural, unhealthy fowl ! I 
don't see why we should have a turkey at all, if it comes to that. 1 ' 

iC Because every one else does," said Eliza stoutly. 

" We have turkeys often enough on other days, "said Mrs. Penn, still look- 
ing over her silks for the shade she wished. 

* 4 But Thanksgiving Day, 1 ' persisted Eliza. 

"What is Thanksgiving Day to me ? " 

11 Ma'am • " 

" What is Thanksgiving Day to me ? What have I to be thankful for ? " 

"Well, ma am," said Eliza, who was on the intimate footing given by 
having lived with Mrs. Penn since she was born, "you're alive, and you're 
well " 

f I don't consider that anything to be thankful for," said Mrs. Penn. " I'm 
not at all thankful to be alive— I'd rather be dead. And being alive I've a right 
to be well ! * 

" I suppose Charity Bowen thinks she has a right to be well, too — bedrid- 
den for twenty years,"' said Eliza, in whom the ways of the household and the 
habit of years had fostered an easy familiarity. " And. perhaps, she would be 
better for the medicines if they could afford the difference between selling the 
turkey here and selling it to the middle-man.' 1 

" She can have all the medicines she wants, and you know it very well ! " 

* u They're a proud and honest folk, Mrs. Penn.^ 

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Eliza, buy the turkey, if that's what you want. 
But you mustn't keep it for any supposititious Thanksgiving Day. You can 
have it to-morrow/' 

fek It wont be ready to-morrow, They don't expect to kill it till the last 
week in November.""' 

ta ' Well, do as you please If you're set upon eating turkey by way of 
expressing any annual pressure of thanks, why, eat it I Only don't expect me 
to do so. Pm not at all thankful for the privilege of living in a tomb" 

" It looks like a tomb,' 1 said Eliza, gazing down the stately room, w T ith its 
rich rugs, its old portraits, its china placques, its glowing fire, its flowers in 
crystal vases, its books'and silken cushions and deep chairs. 

" No matter what it looks like; it is a tomb. And I am just as dead in it 
as if the bells had tolled for me." 

" You'll have to excuse me, ma'am, out if I talked that way you'd say I was 
tempting Providence. 1 ' 

u To what ? *' demanded Mrs. Penn. 



368 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

" For my part," said the desperate Eliza, goaded by long series of similar 
outbursts, " where the Lord puts me I expect He puts me for something." 

Mrs. Penn looked at her with almost a gleam of amusement in her eyes. 
"Oh, I'll excuse you," said she. "Anything by way of a diversion. One must 

have conversation, even if it's with an impertinent" But Eliza gently 

closed the door, and the opportunity for further conversation, too, before the 
word "servant" should offend her ears. 

Mrs. Penn put away her silks; it was too dark to match the shades, and, 
gathering her threads to put in the fire, walked up and down the room. "One 
must do something to change the poles," she said. And then she paused 
to look out the window at the man plodding up the avenue with the mail, and 
then at the gray landscape — the hills already black with shadow, a dull rose in 
the upper air above the rising mists, where a couple of crows flapped heavily, 
all fading to dim, melancholy outlines and a promise of com.ng storm. " And 
one night just like another, and one day just like another," she murmured, as 
she turned and sat down before the fire, lifting her skirt daintily, for all it was 
no matter, she said, whether it scorched or not. "I don't know why I care," 
she said. "There isn't anything any matter. And as for me, I'm not as much 
use as the log on the coals — that is good for something." And she hid her face 
in her hands, and began to enjoy her favorite twilight diversion, the summing 
up of her misfortunes and injuries and miseries, and if she could have had a 
new one to add to them she would have had a pang of satisfaction. "My hus- 
band dead, my children dead, my people dead, shut up here because on account 
of my hay -fever I can't live in any other spot on earth; without a friend to talk 
to superior to a servant, without an object in life, without a soul to love, with- 
out a soul to love me — except — maybe — poor Eliza — why shouldn't I call such 
an existence a living tomb? Why should I give thanks for it? It's unbearable 
—the solitude, the dreariness. Oh, I'm so lonely; if I only had something I 
could love!" she exclaimed, the tears trickling through her fingers; "If I only 
had a cat to love — and I don't like cats — I'd as lief have snakes round" 

Eliza opened the door, and John brought in the lamps and went out again. 

" The mail," said Eliza, rather loftily, but lingering over a lamp after hand- 
ing Mrs. Penn the newspaper and a letter with foreign stamps. 

" Mercy on us! " cried Mrs. Penn. " A black border! It's from Eva; who 
in the world is she in mourning for ? " 

" Some one out of the world," said Eliza, busying herself with the shade. 

" And sealed with black wax — dear, dear, I wonder who is dead now! " 

" If you would open it," said the irrepressible Eliza, " you would find out." 

"Oh, Eliza, how unsympathetic you are! When you know it's bad 
news " 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 369 

" Shall I open it, ma'am ? " 

" Yes, Eliza, do. I don't know — I'm all of a tremble " 

"There. Here it is. Now you can read it. And you know that what- 
ever happens to Mrs. Robson, you've been in the way of thinking it's not much 
matter to you." 

"Not much matter to me ? Oh, Eliza! " cried Mrs. Penn, whose eyes had 
been rapidly running 1 over the unfolded sheet. "Not much matter to me? 
Just read that, and see if it's no matter to me. They're coming here! " 

"My gracious!" said Eliza, taking the chance presented and reading a 
little more slowly. " Bag and baggage ! The whole kit of them ! " 

" Every one." 

"Oh, I don't know about that. Isn't it awful? And I never used to 
children." 

" Eliza! You wouldn't leave me now? " 

"Land sakes! Who said anything about leaving?" exclaimed Eliza, who, 
having played dolls and gone to district school with Mrs. Penn, had been hsr 
familiar and tyrant ever since. " How could I leave you — all the same as 
born and bred together ! I wasn't talking of leaving; I was talking of this Bed- 
lam upside-down." 

" Yes, Mr. Robson dead, the pcor soul! And the money gone — I always 
knew it would go ! And they all on the way over. And Eva wants to rest here 
a little, and then leave the children with me till she finds work. And she has 
no one else to turn to. And that means — oh, I don't know what it means ! 
Eliza, I see it all as plainly as if a messenger from Heaven declared it — if they 
come here, they never will go away! And they'll be here any day now! 
There's no time, there's no way of heading them oft. A telegram can't reach 
people in mid-ocean!" 

"The poor young thing!" cried Eliza, with a total change of base. 
" Alone in a strange country, and with four children — why the oldest of them 
isn't ten ! And crossing the sea with no nurse, and seasick, I'll be bound, and 
without a penny in the world — I don't wonder it makes your heart ache, 
ma'am ! " 

"Oh, yes, yes — it's all very terrible! There's so much trouble in the 
world. It seemed as if I had enough of my own before this." 

" And now you've got hers." 

"And oh, Eliza, just think of it! A horde of children overrunning us. 
Only picture it ! This room, this heaven of rest — what a den of confusion it is 
to become ! The books will be ruined, the photographs — they will break that 
dear bust of the Baby Emperor all to flinders, just as sure as you live ! Noth- 
ing will be safe. There will be finger-marks on the windows and on the paint, 



37o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

crumbs everywhere, crusts of bread and jam, and half-eaten apples on every 
chair in the place — and I don't dare think of the dining-room ! " 

"Then I wouldn't, ma'am." 

11 Oh, how can I help it? There will be cries and screams there and every- 
where else — those children never can have had any bringing up, if I remember 
Eva. " 

" Oh, now, ma'am ! " 

4 'Yes, Eliza, children are children the world over," said Mrs. Penn, as if 
she announced a new fact in natural history. " They'll be having bad dreams 
in the night and crying enough to wake the dead, and they'll be carrying on 
with pillow fights before daybreak, and I'll lose all my morning nap — the very 
best sleep I have ! And they'll be having croup and measles, and you'll have to 
keep the house still then, and you can't. Oh, I know what children are in a 
house! And, Eliza, I'll have the whole of them to clothe and feed! Eva Rob- 
son do anything to earn money! Oh, Eliza,'' cried Mrs. Penn, in a heart- 
broken voice, "what have I done to be punished this way? Wasn't it bad 
enough before, without having a tribe of little Mohawks let loose in my house ! 
Oh, I can't bear it — I shall have to go to bed, and you must bring me some- 
thing hot to put me to sleep; and oh, it's in my heart to wish I might never 
wake up ! It will be the death of me, that's what it will be ! " 

And Mrs. Penn tottered off to bed, and her tears fell into the unaccus- 
tomed refreshment of her hot dose; for Eliza made it, and she made it strong, 
and she dreamed that all the cherubs in the print of the Madonna standing on 
the moon had come out of the picture, and were flying through the room and 
buzzing around her pillow, and she could not get a netting stout enough to 
keep them out. 

It was some days before Mrs. Penn, owing to the results of her unwonted 
excitement, and perhaps of her unwonted refreshment, left her room. 
The sunset that had been pouring over the valley had fallen into 
starry dusk, and the whistle of the mail train was sounding far off on 
its way between the hills. John was just lighting the lamps. " I've 
come down stairs for one last hour of peace," she said. " For they may be 
here any day, now. To think I shall never see this great lovely room again in 
any decent condition till those children go ! And go they must ! I will have my 
trustees get Eva something to do the first moment possible. And if they can't 
and worst comes to worst, she can take half my income and go away some- 
where out of my sight, and I'll dismiss half the servants and shut up half the 
house. I can't lose all my rest! I will have some sort of peace in my declin- 
ing years! " She rose hurriedly as she spoke, and set the cup of fragrant tea 
that Eliza had brought her on the mantel-shelf; for there was a sound of beat- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 371 

ing hoofs on the avenue, a crackling- of gravel under wheels, a furious ringing 
of the big doorbell, an outcry of voices, and suddenly the children were swarm- 
ing all over her, with cold lifted faces and clasping arms, and little Penn was 
raising his voice in tears, and some one was bringing in the mother and laying 
her on a sofa, where she quietly fainted away. 

Mrs. Penn gave herself and her condition and her apprehension one wild 
hurried half moment ; and then the woman in her rose triumphant, and she 
ran to Eva with her smelling salts, and she snatched the water from a bowl of 
violets with which to sprinkle her white face, and called for Thomas to drive 
post-haste for the doctor, and with the children exclaiming and wailing and 
tumbling about her, had John carry the insensible form up to the best room, 
that Eliza had already aired and warmed on a peradventure. And then Mrs. 
Penn and Eliza, between them, got off the prostrate woman's clothes, and 
bathed her with alcohol and warm water, and put on her Mrs. Penn's very best 
laced and tucked and ribboned night-dress ; and that done, Eliza went to see 
to the children and give them their supper and put them also to bed. 

" Just a spark of life left," said Dr. Thorns. " Danger of heart failure. A 
weak heart, anyway. She will have to owe her life to your care, Mrs. Penn, if 
she comes round. I'll be in again in a couple of hours." 

And when, after midnight, he had done his best and left his further orders, 
Mrs. Penn did not even pause to wonder at herself for the eagerness with which 
she obeyed him, for the way in which all night she kept the bottles of hot 
water packed about the frame where the vital action was so low, administered 
the restoratives, and hung upon the faltering breath, and when at last toward 
morning she felt an answering pressure of the frail hand she held and saw the 
eyelids nutter, and a glance of recognition come and go, she went to the window, 
with her heart swelling in her throat, and she looked out upon the great stars 
flashing in the sky, with a sense of kinship she had never had before, as if she, 
too, were fulfilling some office in the universe- for the doctor had said this life 
depended on her, and she was saving it. 

The doctor had. telegraphed, when he first left the house, for a couple of 
trained nurses, anr 7 they arrived in the morning, and Eliza kept the children in 
a distant part of t' 5 house, and Mrs. Penn had a long slumber before she came 
down to tea, and found little Irene, the ten-year-old child, mothering the brood, 
as if she had long been used to it, and in a way that first made Mrs. Penn open 
her eyes wide and then filled them with tears. " I declare!" Eliza had said 
to her before she came down, " the way that child carries the load of all the 
other children is enough to break your heart, the little woman ! * Mrs. Penn 
took Penn, the two-year-old baby, on her lap, and fed him herself, carried him 
into the drawing-room and warmed his feet by the fire there, and undressed him. 



372 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Irene hovering about to placate him if need be, and sang him to sleep in her 
arms, and carried him to his little bed at last, and went to her own wearied but 
full of sense of dut} 7 done that was as novel as it was agreeable. "I'm sure 
Mr. Penn would be pleased," she said, and fell asleep. 

She was waked in the morning by a patter of little feet and a disturbance 
of the coverlet, and a little white-robed creature in the gray morning twilight 
was creeping into bed with her, and two little arms were round her neck, and 
a little rosy cheek was touching hers, and a silver voice was cooing in her half 
bewildered ear : " I love 'oo. I love 'oo vewy mush ! " 

" Bless his little heart!" she said to Irene, wh© had pattered in after him 
to hinder his waking her. " Here, here, you come round and get in the other 
side. You'll have your death o' cold ! John hasn't shaken down the furnace 
yet." And the little adventurer lay between them, and she turned to stretch 
an arm over both of them, and they all fell asleep again together, and when at 
length Mrs. Penn awoke again and saw them, a sunbeam stealing in and 
kindling the two pretty heads to gold, she knew she had not been so happy 
since she used to wake and see Geoffrey Penn's head on the other pillow. 

It was Mrs. Penn herself who slipped on a piece of half-eaten gingerbread 
on the stair carpet, and in her hurry to overtake little Penn, who had fallen 
down, forgot to remember the spot it made. And it was Eliza who gathered a 
select assortment of apple cores from the drawing-room tables and said nothing. 
And it was Mrs. Penn who sopped with her own napkin, before the maid could 
reach it, the contents of Penn's overturned glass of milk, and had to take him 
in her arms then for the remainder of the dinner time to quiet his frightened 
and repentant roaring. 

" It's singular," she said to Eliza next day, "but I don't know when I've 
had such a good night's rest." 

It was Mrs. Penn who found herself buttering bread at all hours of the 
day, taking a little company into the store-room to overlook the jams and cakes 
and goodies there, telling story after story when the dark came on, creeping 
in to look at the little sleepers in the middle of the night, and visiting the sick 
room with breathless and soundless caution, and crying over Eva at last when 
she had been lifted to the lounge and was able to hold one down with the em- 
braces of her poor weak arms. "You are so good," sighed Eva. And at 
another time she murmured, "Oh, what should I have done if I hadn't had you 
to come to ! " 

"I am sure Mr. Penn would be pleased, 7 ' Mrs. Penn said again, as she left 
the room. 

If you had happened to be on the Pennfield highway any pleasant Novem- 
ber afternoon, you might have seen Mrs. Penn, who had been in the habit of 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



37, 



iisrcsi 




THAT TURKEY WILL 
1 BE LOOKING LIKE A BIG 

HEATHEN GOD. 

never setting her foot on the 
ground, walking with a little 
rabble of children, this one holding her finger, and that one her skirt, and 
investigating ants' holes and forsaken nests and seed vessels and the like; or 
you might have met her coming home from somewhere and holding at arm's 
length and by the nape of the neck a scrawny kitten that pawed the air, of which 
monster she was terribly afraid, but for which both Penn and Irene had 
chanced to express a w T ish. 

11 I guess I would let that go till regular cleaning day," said Mrs. Penn, as 
Eliza was going round with a wet cloth, wiping the finger-marks off the paint. 
'* It might hurt their feelings, you know." 

11 That's so, ma'am." 

" Do you mind it all very much ? " asked Mrs. Penn, wistfully. 

"Mind it !" said Eliza. "It seems as if we had just begun to live, 
ma'am." 

" I don't know but it does, Eliza," said Mrs. Penn. " How short the days 
are growing ! I don't seem to get anything accomplished." 

" Except making these dear children love you, ma'am." 

" You're as silly as I am, Eliza." 

There had been three or four weeks of this when, one day, the door of the 
mother's room being left open, there poured in upon her an amazing sound of 



374 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

revelry. Of course poor Mrs. Eva did not know that Geoffrey was standing in 
his boots on the velvet sofa to better inspect a " Holy Family" with his lead 
pencil, or that Penn was drumming- on a lacquered tray with a gold filagree 
spoon, or that Amy was meddling with the big Swiss music box, or that Irene 
was sitting with a strew of precious photographs around her, to which the others 
came with eager fingers and loud shouts every few moments; but she knew 
that Pandemonium was reigning there "Oh," she murmured, "you will be 
so glad when they go. It is a cruelty. Your quiet house ! How can you bear 
it ? Oh, I know it is an imposition ! " 

" What are you talking about ? " exclaimed Mrs. Penn. 

" But you see I am gaining so fast I shall be downstairs in a few days. 
And I think I shall be able to get a position in the Government ; it has been 
promised to me, and then I shall relieve you. But I shall never, when I am 
gone— never, never, oh never, forget your goodness in taking us in so ! " 

"When you are gone! My dear child, you are talking nonsense. When 
you are gone with my consent will be the day after never. You wouldn't have 
the heart, now would you, Eva," said Mrs. Penn, the tears ready to start, "to 
put me back where I was before you and these darling children came into the 
house ? Dead and alive — more dead than alive I was — just in a living tomb ! " 

" But the noise — the mischief — the confusion " 

" Oh, my dear, it is life! I used to think so much of my pimlico order, 
and now it is a positive pleasure to see a train of cars and a circus in the draw- 
ing room. Eliza and I were saying this very day we didn't know how we got 
along before you came. And I am going to have the big room in the wing 
fitted for a schoolroom, and the room between for a nursery, and have a nurse 
for Penn and Amy and a governess for Geoffrey and Irene/' 

" But oh, the expense ! " 

"Never mind the expense! It was their grandfather's money, and he 
would rather they had it, I know, than have it hoarded for a lot of societies in 
the end. And they shall ! I am making you an allowance, Eva, and I shall see 
to all the rest. Oh, Eliza! " as a foot drew near ; " is that you, Eliza ? What 
have you done about that turkey ? I wish you'd send down to the Bowens' and 
see if it's gone." 

" It's hanging up in the cold cellar, Mrs. Penn," said the demure Eliza. 

" Eliza, what a jewel you are! You always just anticipate me. Eva, dar- 
ling, I think we can get you down to the table where that turkey will be looking 
like a big heathen god, and we will forget you have ever been away! " 

And as they all sat about the table with the nuts and candy when the 
feast was over, " I haven't had such a Thanksgiving," Mrs. Penn said, " since 
my husband died ! I was dead and I am alive ; I was lost and I am found. I 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



375 



was a limp and useless nonentity, and now I am a part of the breathing world, 
with something to do, with people to love, and with a heart full of thank- 
fulness." 

11 I wish we had Thanksgiving twice a vear, don't you, grandmother ?" 
piped Amy. 

" I am having it now every day of my life, my little dear," said Mrs. Penn. 
" I am having a perpetual Thanksgiving! " 




376 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 



About Pets. 

But think admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dof ^hall bear him company. 

— Pope. 
Like a dog he hunts in dreams. 

— Tennyson. 
The house without a pet 

Is a sad house, you know; 
There all the trifles fret. 
And every task is woe. 

— Anon. 

He hailed the bird in Spanish speech, 

The bird in Spanish speech replied, 
Flapped round his cage with joyous screech, 

Dropped down and died. 

— Campbell. 

Let Hercules himself do what he may, 

The cat will mew and dog will have his day. 

— Shakespeare . 
A harmless, necessary cat. 

— Shakespeare, 

When I play with my cat, who knows if I do not make her more sport than she makes 
me 1— Montaigne, 

A ha-dy mouse that is bold to breede 
In catte's eeris. 

— Chaucer. 

The human members of our happy household cannot flatter themselves 
that they are the sole constituents of the family. There are certain other mem- 
bers whose affection and whose intelligence have a great deal to do with the 
happiness of the house. To be sure, in the city certain pets are impossible ; it 
is difficult, for example, to have large dogs in town and give them the exercise 
needed for health. But when one is willing to take the trouble of giving them 
their frequent run, how much they add to our amusement and the liveliness of 
the family ! 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



377 




NOT THE SOLE CONSTITUENTS OF THE FAMILY. 



Poor Dog Tray. 

There are many people who have an unreasonable fear of dogs, and espe- 
cially so in the season known as dog-days. These days of sultry and humid 
summer have an ill repute which is undeserved, tl Dog -day weather" is a final 
epithet of opprobrium when we condemn the temperature. Yet, curiously 
enough, the dog-days originally received their name as a matter of honor and 



378 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

dignity. The long-headed Egyptians, observing that the Nile rose annually 
with the heliacal rising of a certain brilliant star, called that orb of beneficent 
influences Sihor, the Nile. And as its coming warned them to their terraces 
out of reach of the flood they typified it as a dog, or a man with a dog's head. 
The Latins adopted the star as Sirius, but forgot, or never knew, its signifi- 
cance, while ignorance, mistaking coincidence for cause, ascribed to it a bale- 
ful increase of the heat. In time the popular belief declared that on its rising 
wine turned sour, dogs went mad, all other animals began to waste, and man 
to decline. The Romans even sacrificed a brown dog to appease its rage. 

Superstition has a deep root. Macaulay's school-boy may repeat till he is 
hoarse that this slandered luminary twinkles at the reassuring distance of two 
trillions two hundred thousand billions of miles from our little sphere, while 
the illustrative cannon-ball, traveling four hundred and eighty miles an hour, 
must consume five hundred and twenty-three thousand two hundred and 
eleven years in the journey thither; and science may reiterate that rabies, what- 
ever its nature or origin, is not exclusively a midsummer madness; every year, 
notwithstanding, panic terror concerning hydrophobia recurs, and walks hand 
in hand with wholesale slaughter. 

Yet the patient, faithful, taciturn creatures thus despitef ully entreated have 
been the unselfish friends and servants of man since the dim antiquity wherein 
that naked savage suddenly bethought himself to make a coat of his compan- 
ion's skin. Indeed, your dog is your only unquestioning and free-hearted 
lover. Other animals return a vague attachment for benefits received. Hu- 
manity rigidly exacts its quid pro quo; to be loved of his kind, one must be lov- 
able. But a man's dog clings to him through ill report and good report — 
suffers, starves, dies at his hands, and counts itself happy in the oppor- 
tunity. 

Famous Dogs. 

Did not Plato the Broad swear by a dog ? Did not the dog of Alcibiades 
cost seventy minas — a thousand dollars of our coinage ? was he not even more 
esteemed for his sagacity than for his beauty ? and did not his fidelity withstand 
the coarse caprices, the cruel indignities, of that brilliant master from whom 
all other friends fell away ? Did not that greater general, William of Orange, 
love his dog as well, and honor him much more ? 

Charles the Second, who cared for neither man nor woman, cherished his 
dogs with a fondness bequeathed to him possibly by his grandmother, Anne of 
Denmark, who kept a retinue of those followers, and paid a very pretty annual 
bill to Master Heriot, the court goldsmith, for their gold and silver collars and 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 379 

emblazoned blankets, thereby contributing, no doubt, to the endowment of his 
famous hospital. It was that royal lady's successor, her present Majesty of 
England, who, inheriting the family taste, presented his ugliness of Skye to an 
obsequious court, and made him a fashion. 

Who, among us, being examined as to the events of King John's evil reign, 
could remember one save the signing of the Magna Charta, and the death of 
Gelert, the hound ? What a dreary waste of dates and bloodshed is the history 
of the Crusades; but at the name of Roswal, the dog of Sir Kenneth, how the 
hot sands of Syria, the splendor and valor of the legions, the fierce courage of 
Richard, the enlightened chivalry of the Sultan Saladin, the aspirations, the 
prejudices, the very image of the time, rise before us ! 

Barry, the famous dog of great St. Bernard, saved forty lives, and among 
others, carried on his back to the hospice, through towering snow-drift, a baby 
whose mother had been killed by an avalanche. If he stood for charity, Aubry's 
dog stood for justice, when, with whatever emphasis might lie in furious threat- 
enings, he accused Richard of Macaire of his master's murder. 



The Dog in Literature. 

Literature has made the dog her own, and Art has loved him. Who thinks 
of Sir Walter without Maida ? Is not Flush beloved by Mrs. Browning's 
lovers ? Can we separate heroic little Miss Mitford from her faithful spaniel ? 
Is not Byron's Boatswain fitly sepultured at Newstead Abbey ? Who can read 
without tears that perfect story, ■' Rab and his Friends " ? Who has not a ten- 
der feeling for the invisible, beloved Schneider who comforts scapegrace Rip 
Van Winkle in his distresses ? Who has not known and loved the dogs of Land- 
seer ? How many tombs of the old knights bear a sculptured dog to show that 
they followed their standard as a dog his master ? On how many monuments 
of illustrious women his effigy symbolized fidelity and affection, as the lion's 
image symbolized courage and magnanimity ! What innumerable records of 
fearlessness, self-sacrifice, patience, sagacity, devotion, justify that good say- 
ing of Hamerton, " I pity the man who can live a dogless life ! " 

It is true that in the cities there is no room for dogs. They must be 
crowded out, with some other good gifts of heaven. The dog is a natural 
rover. He loves free air, free ways, the smell of fresh turf. Shut in to alien 
pavements, scorched by the sun, pinched by the winter winds, parched with 
thirst, faint with hunger, the race deteriorates, develops strange diseases, and 
from man's safeguard becomes his possible danger. 

But in their natural home, with water, shade, and kindness, the nobler 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




breeds of dogs, which 
alone should be perpetu- 
ated, are no more dan- 
gerous in August than 
in January, which is 
more than can be said 
of man, who too often 
develops a most uncer- 
tain, not to say fero- 
cious, temper under 
these brazen skies. Let 
us, then, be reasonable. 
Banish poor Tray to the 
country, watch him if 
need be, slay him if 
need be, but let us not indulge in excessive apprehension of the whole canine 
species. We shall have gotten a step farther in civilization when dog-days 
cease to be an indiscriminate carnage of dogs of all degree. 



Harmless Necessary Cat, 

And if there is so much to be said for the dog, who appears to be capable 
of every emotion that human beings show — love, hatred, jealousy, fear, anger, 
courage, depression, sorrow and joy, patience and faithfulness and the rest — 
shall nothing in her turn be pleaded for the cat ? The ubiquitous cat, found 
all the world over, and all the world over always the same, whose lovers claim 
for her an almost human perfection, and who everywhere, on sea or shore, in 
the parlor or in the hut, makes a place look like home ! And yet no member 
of the family has suffered the abuse that the family cat receives at the hands 
of the world. We do not speak of those who starve her; who turn her out- 
doors at night, who go away for a season in the country and leave her to forage 
for herself, but of those who simply slander her by injurious report. Accord- 
ing to these scandalous people the cat is without beauty and without affection ; 
she is ungrateful, cruel, stupid, treacherous, and dishonest. Strange that on 
such a worse than worthless being should be lavished the religious worship of 
nations and so much of the household love of uncounted individuals as poor 
Pussv has received ! 

The Cat's Beauty. 

But let us look at the charges. Without beauty? She is a being whose 
outlines are beauty itself; she is a succession of supple curves, and every curve 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 381 

obeys the law of the line of beauty, and all that beauty is heightened by the 
further beauty of gloss and movement. How brilliant are those eyes, likeness 
to which gives value to a precious jewel — the cat's-eye quartz, that otherwise 
were a worthless pebble ! She is clad in furs shining with life, and which, 
while upon her, are incomparably superior to those dead furs which a princess 
is proud to wear. Every motion is grace, and whether she is black, or white, 
or gray, or tortoise-shell, every tint she assumes is a pure and charming 
one. 

Is she without affection? When she goes to meet her chosen friends in the 
family and fawn about their feet, when she caresses them in their sickness, and 
sometimes dies broken-hearted in their death, it would seem to manifest love 
for them. When she suffers little children to lift her by the tail and carry her 
round by the heels, dress her up in caps and aprons as a doll, and inflict upon 
her a thousand well-meant pains, it looks as though she loved them. There 
are innumerable instances on record of the affection of cats for children, and 
entirely contradictory of the outrageous old notion of their sucking the breath 
of babies. 

Puss, indeed, often makes her nest in the cradle, but not because she 
loves the little milky breath, nor because she loves the warmth, but because 
she loves the baby. She has been known to fly at the biggest and most fero- 
cious dog entering the room where her little friend lay sleeping, to jump from 
the cradle when the child cried and run for the mother, returning and standing 
with her fore-feet on the cradle's edge, nervous and anxious till the mother 
took up the child; and one belonging to Mrs. Wilson, of Cults, near Aberdeen, 
Scotland, once accosted his mistress with piteous meaows, running repeatedly to 
the door, and endeavoring to fetch her with him, and finally succeeding, when 
the lady found her sick and feeble child rolled from the sofa where it had been 
left, and so enveloped in the rugs and wraps that it would presently have suf- 
focated if help had not been brought by the cat. 

When, moreover, the cat conquers her hereditary attachment to places, 
and follows persons about in their peregrinations, it cannot be because she 
loves to travel. Dr. Stables, a surgeon of the British navy, tells us of his" 
cat which, although at six years old the mother of a hundred kittens, yet 
found time to accompany him on all his travels, having journeyed over twenty 
thousand miles in his company, usually bestowing herself, when she judged 
that it was flitting-time, in the little basket that carried her, but on one oc- 
casion, having taken so long an airing before starting that her master was 
obliged to leave without her, she hailed him, as he walked along the railway 
platform, from a first-class carriage that she had thought it best to take to 
save time, 



382 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



The Cat's Virtues. 

But when people say that Puss is cruel they forget that all carnivorous ani- 
mals, and man among them, are cruel, too. Yet Puss is sometimes more virtuous 
than man in this regard, and will live for years with the tempting morsel of a 
bird playing about her, disputing her dinner, and alighting on her very head. 
Dr. Good told, long ago, of one that had lived at peace with a tame canary, 
suddenly, to the horror of the family, seizing it in her mouth, and springing to 
the top of a tall secretary, whereupon it was found that a strange cat had en- 
tered the room, which authenticated fact, from a 
scientific authority, must be held to dispose of the 
accusations both of cruelty and of stupidity if there 
were not other instances in plenty to do the same. 
There is certainly sagacity in the way any cat finds 
her way across miles of country to an old home, 
in the way she often sits by the cow, 
and asks the milkman to attend to her 
wants, in the way she as often goes 
fishing; it was sagacity in the 
cat which caught the escap- 
ing canary, and brought it 
back alive to her mistress; it 
was sagacity in the cat that ab- 
solutely baited a mouse-hole 
with part of her dinner, and sat 
and watched till she could 
pounce upon the mouse •, 
it was sagacity in the 
cat that knew when 
>i Sunday came, as Mr. 
Whyte, of Dallfield 
* Terrace, Dundee, re- 
lates ; and the cats that, 
threatened with condign 
punishment, have sud- 
denly disappeared and 
never re-appeared are 
legion. If one wants a 
study in philosophy, by 
the way, and an oppor- 




CATS ARE A PART OF THE LARES AND PENATES 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 383 

tunity to discriminate between instinct and reason, he has only to observe any 
young cat on her first experience of a mirror, as she tries to put her paw behind 
it, pops back to see if the foe is still there, and ends by boxing- the ears of the 
impudent creature confronting her there, and scampers away with her tail 
as big as ten, profoundly convinced of magic, whether or not she knows the 
word. 

As for the treachery and dishonesty of Puss, which must be classed under 
the same head, that charge is simply libelous. The cat is naturally a hunter. If 
you take her away from her hunting-field and expect her to live the civilized life 
of the parlor, she must be fed regularly, as any other civilized being must be. The 
best of us, King David, for example, when famishing or when simply hungry, 
can be tempted to help ourselves. What credit to this little dumb creature, then, 
that she does not do it oftener ! The cook would have whipped Puss for eat- 
ing some of the oysters. " And what for," said the table girl, " when he did 
the dacent thing to lave any ? " There are really few honester persons than a 
well-trained and well-treated cat. She is often the trusted guardian of prop- 
erty, as any grocer who keeps his pet parading on the counter can tell you. 
Why we should expect those little furry paws to keep themselves " from pick- 
ing and stealing ;; any more than our own fingers, in like circumstances, is not 
to be explained by merely calling names. 



The Cat a Fireside Ornament. 

In the mean time, as it has been often said, there is about every cat a certain 
feminine quality that makes her an appropriate " property " of the hearth ; 
she loves her home and fireside, where she welcomes the wanderer, and seems 
to him a part of them ; she is gentle in her movements, and graceful as a court 
lady with a well-regulated train ; she cheers tired and dull moods with her 
pretty pranks, and sick hours with a watchful solicitude, always glad to sit 
beside your pillow when allowed. If she has some curiosity in her composition , 
if she loves a gossip with a neighbor , if she values praise, and brings you her 
first captive mouse to get it; if she has a little, ever so little, cunning — does 
not all that furnish further resemblance to the daughters of Eve f And when 
you see her bring up her kitten, teach it its manners, and box its ears on mis- 
behavior, does she do anything but complete the parallel ? Certainly cats are 
to every household where they are loved at all a part of the Lares and Penates, 
and to such households it is no matter of marvel that the Egyptians deified them 
and laid their poor little carcasses away at last with all the honor given to the 
royal mummy. But it was not merely as the friend of the hearth that this was 



384 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

done ; for Egypt was the land of grain, and the enemy of rats and mice pre- 
served it from incalculable loss. In our own country, where it can hardly be 
denied that such vermin cost many thousand dollars' worth of damage yearly, 
the cat is no less valuable an animal than she was in ancient Egypt, and if she 
is not deified, she should certainly be treated with indulgence and respect. 



The Little Egyptian Cat. 

They made a mummy of her, I say, over there in those dark old days. Did 
you ever hear the story of one of those little mummied cats ? 

" I was a little Egyptian cat, 
And I lived in King Pharaoh's house, I did 
The rats and the mice I caught with delight, 
And I even ate birds, which I know was not right, 
And instead of a fence I would sit out all night 
And meow on the top of a pyramid. 

One day I was greedy and ate seven mice, 
And I had a bad fit, and I died, I did. 
They hurried and made me this beautiful case, 
Which covers me all excepting my face, 
And they laid me away in a snug little place, 
On a shelf inside of a pyramid. 

And there I have lain all these thousands of years, 
And hoped to lie buried forever, I did. 
They hunted me out and brought me away, 
And now isn't it awful that I have to slay 
In this dusty museum, day after day, 
When I want to go back to my pyramid ? " 



The Cat's Usefulness. 



And if there were no more to say in the praise of Puss save that she is the 
destroyer of the small deer that infest the dwelling, and particularly the city 
dwelling, it would have to be acknowledged that she is a blessing past valuing. 
For although there are countless things that would seem to have been set on 
foot merely to try the patience of the housekeeper, and show her what a saint 
she could be if associated kitchens, and reservoirs of heat, and all the kindred 
household labor-saving machinery to be thought of were applied to her case, 
yet there are none of all her vexations that exceed in trouble that given by ver- 
min in the walls of a house, and no vermin in diabolical maliciousness and 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 385 

intelligence equals the nuisance of rats, which, for excess of evil, may have 
been banished from Eblis itself. 

The rat, in fact, is the housekeeper's worst enemy, always of course put- 
ting possibly her own indolence and procrastination out of the question. His 
boldness is only equaled by his cupidity, his cupidity by his cunning, his cun- 
ning by his courage. Her larder is invaded by him by day, her sleeping-room 
by night ; her house itself is eaten up and reduced to sawdust by his teeth, and 
her only satisfaction in contemplating him is that if he lives long enough, the 
poor creature, those teeth will grow over each other so that he can not open his 
mouth to gnaw. She builds a new kitchen when he has riddled the old one, 
very likely, but she would have to line her closets with sheet-iron to keep him 
out of them. His sharp teeth may be heard filing and scraping all day long ; 
they wake her out of sound sleep at night, and as she hears him tumbling round 
the rafters and behind the wainscots, she cannot tell in the dark if it be he, or 
tramps, or burglars, or fire, and he injures her nerves as much as he injures 
her house. She fears to leave the children alone in their beds in the 
evening, fears to leave the sick, and knows that even the dead are not safe on 
their biers. She dare not keep arsenic or strychnine in the house lest some 
one else get it, and worse trouble than that of rats follow ; she hates to buy 
it, too, lest the sudden death of anybody in the circle of her acquaintance 
should put her under suspicion; she dreads to use it when it is bought, 
lest the house be made uninhabitable by the last vexation which the creatures 
that die of it can leave her to endure. If she lives near a piece of water, it is 
not only her house, but her yard, her garden, her orchard, that are infested, 
and fairly undermined by the pitfalls of the holes they dig ; the roots of her 
apple trees are devoured ; her hens are pounced upon when stupid with sleep ; 
her chickens are snatched before her lace and eyes ; her eggs are carried off 
warm from the nest, and the food of the fowls is shared by the bold interlopers 
with ruinous robbery. She cannot fight them, for they will fly at her throat if 
attacked; she cannot drown them, for they swim like bubbles; she cannot catch 
them, for her traps are as good as laughed at by the wretches that figuratively 
snap their fingers at them — and if they were not, of what use would they 
be where the creatures multiply a dozen and a half at a litter ? If 
her home is a rural one, ferrets, which are so valuable in the city, are not 
to be had ; she remembers the old Bishop Hatto who was eaten in his tower, 
and shudders at possibilities ; she would almost forswear her country for the 
sake of living across the sea in Aberdeenshire or Sutherlandshire, where a rat 
cannot be induced to stay; she doubts if even the Pied Piper of Hamelin could 
rid her of the pest for a wilderness of guilders ; she wonders if, in the survival 
of the fittest, this strong, inexterminable brown Norway rat is not destined to 



386 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

destroy the human race and take the earth to itself ; she does not see anything 
strange in the circumstance that people with shattered nerves, whether from 
delirium or other cause, see such things as rats — she is beginning to see noth- 
ing else in the universe herself. 



The Norway Rat. 

He is an intruder, this fierce little pest, at the best, and belongs to a con- 
quering army. He came into Europe from Asia, he came to England from 
Norway, he comes over to America by means of every ship that touches our 
ports; he has destroyed our own rat, which, bad as it was, seems now a superior 
being in remembrance; he is all the more terrible that he takes care of his old 
and sick, and so swells his number; and the only mercy to be found in the visi- 
tation is that he frequently eats up his companions, taking care to turn the s^in 
inside out with a nicety to the very toes. 

And meantime a sort of nervous horror follows the neighborhood of these 
small deer; the housekeeper afflicted by them knows that they are the creatures 
of uncanny legend; that a certain awesome mysticism surrounds them; that 
they have unknown intelligences which warn them when a house is going to 
burn down, or a ship to sink, in full season to desert in safety, and be met 
marching away in platoons; that of old, if not now, they were wont to flee be- 
fore rhyming anathemas addressed to them vocally, and quit the place where 
such were delivered, and instantly obey a letter written to them and sealed 
with butter, politely requesting their departure; that, in. fact, every rat born is 
possessed of a little demon more untamable and vindictive than the armies of 
demons that went wherever Cornelius Agrippa did. She reads old accounts of 
the various methods of attempted extermination, and laughs bitterly to see 
how they have failed; she turns over prints of Annibale Caracci's Rat-catcher 
of Bologna, of Vischer's Dutch Rat-catcher, of the Chinese Rat-catcher with his 
cat in a bag; and while she feels that she could take them all to her bosom, a3 
dear friends with one common purpose in life, would they only rise in the flesh 
and come to her rescue now, yet they only serve to show her that the trouble 
is universal and ineradicable all the round globe over. She marvels that the 
inventive genius of America has not come to her help, and she will regard the 
man who finds out and makes known some way of setting her free from the 
ravages of the rat as greater than he who invents electric lights and telephones, 
or he that taketh a city* 

The Bird in the Cage. 

Nor is it impossible, as some have thought, to keep a bird where there is a 
cat; for, as we have just seen, there are some cases where the cat is the bird's 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 387 

best friend. Always does that house seem delightful to me where, on the open- 
ing of the door, there comes a distant gush of bird-song. And those who have 
canaries and finches and mocking-birds and love-birds will assure us that the 
birds are their intimate friends. Surely that is so with that almost superhuman 
creature, the parrot. I myself have never been able to discover either common 
logic or common sense or common feeling in the old-fashioned fleer upon the 
love of the spinster for her cat and her parrot. If women condemned to soli- 
tary lives, denied the love of husbands, the caresses of children, the companion- 
ship and the protection, both for the present and the future, that family life 
affords — if such women can find in the love of cat or dog or parrot or any other 
pet any solace or compensation, however small, for the loss of the blessings 
that are the privilege of their sisters, what is there ridiculous about it or worthy 
of the least notice or mention? People must love and be loved by something; 
pity them if they have nothing better. Only vulgar observation and a low 
order of wit could have originated the idea that there was anything absurd in 
the business rather than something really touching and pathetic. The purse 
may not be sufficient for the adoption of children, the reason may not be con- 
vinced of the wisdom of bringing up the inheritor of unknown traits to break 
one's heart at last ; but the bird and the cat are within the means of the poorest, 
and offer no suggestion of folly to the wisest. 



Prettv Poll- 



But although spinsters are beginning in this country, as they have long 
done in England, to hold a position of much more consideration than they used 
to do, it is perhaps still fortunate for them in this matter that there is a fashion 
in pets, a fashion by whose revolution certain others are banished, and the little 
marmoset and the larger monkey are brought into the drawing-room, and 
which makes paroquet and lory, long relegated to the spinster or the sailor 
boarding-house, now held as a charming addition to the picturesqueness of the 
modern parlor — the poor parrots that used to take from the original proprietor 
a goodly share of respect for daring to love anything not human and a man. 

But how is it possible, fashion or not, for anybody to find, among all pets, 
one more interesting than the various individuals of the parrot tribe ? Cer- 
tainly as a pleasure to the eye they are remarkable — the comely shape, the 
wondrous colors, the fine poses, the beauty of expanded wings and tail. 
Every poet, every painter, one would think, might value this beauty, and find 
advantage in its companionship, whether it is exhibited in the little green love- 
birds, sleeping head down, who have nothing to say to any but each other, or 
in the Australian grass-paroquet, whose song is as sweet as the voice of the huge 



388 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

red and blue macaw, who measures a yard from crown to tail, and who lives all 
his life with one mate only, is strident, or whether it is seen in the great gray 
parrot, with his scarlet tail like a burning ember, who talks like a familiar for a 
hundred years, or in the purple-capped lory, who, unlike his lory cousins that can 
pronounce only the name of lory, adds language to docility and both to the 
charm of a scarlet and gold body, green wing passing into violet, a purple plume 
on his head, and an orange bill, or in the common, chattering, friendly, festive 
parrot of the Amazon, with all his bravery of green and gold and vermilion, 
or any other one of all the countless specimens that find their way to our shores 
and doors. 

There is something picturesque in the very thought of the way the pretty 
creature does come to us, those that we see being seldom bred in captivity, 
but made prisoners when ravaging semi-tropical harvest fields, or swinging 
from bough to bough of the forests that lift their rank growth just under the 
equator. Some old Jack Tar, ashore on his holiday, captured it, or some negro 
or Indian child brought it down to the strand and the ships to sell, and it has 
been the pet of Jack over all the long lonesome seas between his port and its 
home, and has learned far more than it will ever tell, for all its talking. As it 
sits chained to its perch, what memories it has, and what strange hints it gives 
of groves with their gums and spices in distant archipelagoes glittering in the 
morning sun ! Those weird eyes have seen Canopus and the Southern Cross ; 
that black tongue guards the secret of night in the forecastle, and all with a 
grim uncannines? as if it were leagued with dark powers; and when it speaks, 
and when it bursts into peals of clattering laughter, it seems no less than the 
witch of Endor herself in disguise, or makes us believe in all the enchant- 
ments of the Arabian Nights. No one possessing a parrot can really be quite 
destitute of imagination, so much does it force upon any with the most meagre 
outfit in this regard thoughts beyond the bounds of the customary existence; 
the Black Prince of the Fairy Isles, one-half of whom was marble, is no longer 
a marvel and an impossibility; here is some cunning and articulate being who 
thinks our thoughts and talks our tongue, the whole of whom is feathers 



The Children and the Parrot 

And what a benefactor to a community is she who keeps a parrot, and is 
not niggardly with it, providing she has the sheltering cage cloth to envelop it 
for the benefit of neighbors, whenever he remembers its wild life of the woods 
and attempts its field cries. As far as the school children are concerned she is 
the one person in the village ; it is about her garden and her window that they 
flock, and only a hand organ and a monkey are capable of rivaling it, and they 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 389 

not for long if Polly, stimulated by music, lifts her own voice and reclaims their 
allegiance. 

She fills the gaps in conversation, too, does Polly, sometimes, as well as 
the shortcomings of Bridget, or the existence of the weather, entertains the 
uproarious baby brought on a visit, or scares him into quiet, keeps the cat out 
of mischief with her warning voice, frightens off house-breakers and tramps 
and book agents, and is a live and seemingly intelligent companion. And if it 
is but the simulacrum of a companion, somehow it is such a cunning simula- 
crum, helped by the unknown agencies that always seem to make its speech so 
pat and apropos, that, in a growing attachment, one never finds it out. Poor 
pretty Poll brings to us in our plain lives of the temperate zone all the richness 
of the tropics, although she is cousin to the great snowy owl of the arctic re- 
gions; and while that ominous bird and all its congeners are associated in our 
minds with scenes of desolation, of deserts and ruins and empty church towers, 
where the fallen bells no longer lay the ghosts of the churchyard, this bird 
seems hardly less than a patron bird of home and the home-staying spinster. 



Famous Parrots, 

Nor is the parrot a thing to be despised for any such superficial reason as 
that it has kept company with Jack Tar, and knows the dialect of the sailor board- 
ing-house, and sometimes swears in Spanish. Alexander the Great himself 
brought one into Greece; undoubtedly that parrot was acquainted with both Hin- 
dostanee and Greek, if he did not pick up a Persian phrase or two. Ovid wrote 
an ode on the death of one belonging to Corinne, and of course that parrot spoke 
Latin. Those birds outweigh the forecastle. And both Aristotle and Pliny 
condescended to make themselves acquainted with the Southern stranger, and 
to observe and describe its habits. And we doubt if in their day there was so 
little superstition that even their great minds were exempt from a touch of awe 
in dealing with this bird so far the superior of its remote cousin and counter- 
part, that bird sacred to the great spinster of all, Pallas Athene. 

Birds in general, it is true, belong more to the city house than to the coun- 
try one, since all about the latter birds sing on every bough. But in the 
country there is another member of the family, so to say, which is one of great 
importance, and an immense help in every way. 



A Kerry Cow. 

It is a little remarkable that so many families in our large country towns 
and their surrounding regions have not more universally imitated the example 



39 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

of the poor emigrant, who on the moment that he lands looks about him and 
proceeds to get his potato patch and his cow into action. Of course in cities 
and their immediate neighborhood such a thing is impracticable if not impossi- 
ble ; but in towns built like the most, loosely and over large territory, and where 
almost every house has its bit of land about it or behind it, a dead waste takes 
place; and a great help is thrown away in failing to procure " the little cow," 
as the affectionate Irishman is wont to call this generous provider. And this 
was never more worthy of consideration than at the present, when, for some 
fortunate reason, the price of a cow is wonderfully moderate, and a good one 
can be procured without trouble for a small sum. A couple of acres of land 
will comfortably pasture the creature, once in possession, through all the sum- 
mer months; or, if one has not the land, a small sum of money will pay for the 
pasturage elsewhere, and the winter feed is less than three tons of hay with a 
few bushels of meal. The work of taking care of her is so light that no man 
in any family of moderate circumstances needs to grumble if called upon to do 
it; but as he very probably will grumble, it is a blessing to know that a small 
boy, in consideration of fifty cents a week, and often for a quart of the day's 
milking, may be had, in the greater number of towns, able and willing to do all 
the service that the Dame of the Crumpled Horn usually requires. 

As this is a subject which comes home directly to the housekeeper, we 
shall be pardoned if we dwell upon it a moment. It will be seen that the out- 
lay is not large which procures and maintains this household comfort; and what 
a comfort it is it will not take long either for the purse-holder or for the mother 
of children, or for the cook distracted over her desserts, to discover. 

Wherever there is a cow giving the usual quantity of milk, there need 
never be actual hunger; it supplies a score of deficiencies; and even where 
hunger is not in question, the bills of the butcher and grocer are very sensibly 
and healthily diminished by large rations of milk served to those that can drink 
it, which even the most delicate and dyspeptic can do with the tasteless addition 
of a little lime-water, especially if they remember the favorable action of 
"milk-cures" in many cases, which probably means nothing more than cure 
by means of a nourishing food easily assimilated, as other food may not be. 



Advantages of the Cow. 

Very few families feel themselves able to contract and pay large milk 
bills, and they are apt to go without more than just enough for tea and coffee, 
or perhaps the exact needs of the baby. But when the milk is in the pans and 
they are not feeling the cost of it, they find its advantage not only in the pleas- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 391 

tire and comfort of bountiful draughts, but in the thousand and one varying 
dishes which it makes possible, and which were previously reckoned as too 
expensive for daily use. Thus in the more generous table made possible the 
well-being of the family is increased, as enriching and blood-producing diet 
cannot help doing. 

What a comfort it is to the housekeeper to have her pans of milk ready to 
surrender their rich skins of cream, only those can tell who have been suddenly 
taken unawares by " company " without a satisfactory dessert on hand, or who 
are at a loss for something just a degree nicer than common for breakfast ; since 
this cream is capable of being whipped and poured into a countless number of 
hurried forms, each more palatable than the other, and is delicious poured plain 
and untutored over the simple breakfast cake, while served with a common 
apple pie, or with even a dish of boiled oatmeal, or with old-fashioned " pre- 
serves," it gives a delicacy and daintiness that deceive one into thinking the des- 
sert of the finest. Meanwhile there is left the " skimmed milk," for which the 
cook has endless uses, for which the poor are only too thankful, and on which, 
if one has a little pig as well as a "little cow'* — although that I never will 
advise — the pig can be fattened royally. The good house-mother also may find 
that the men of her family who have a plenty of rich milk to drink will not seek 
anything much stronger or more huitful, and it will always be a help to her 
larder, and a balm to the feeling that hates to dismiss a "tramp " without food, 
lest it should be the traditional " angel unawares, " if there is a big bowl of milk 
to be handed out to him. 

I do not mention at length the ineffable comfort, saving, and satisfaction 
of having one's own butter at command, for one can not do everything with 
one cow; and remembering the vulgar but veracious adage that one can not 
have one's cake and eat it, too, we understand that we can not use our cream 
and still have butter* There is, nevertheless, now and then some one cow 
which deserves fame, which gives a family all the milk they can drink, all the 
cream they can use, and furnishes enough cream besides for a good quantity of 
butter; and if I myself have never met with her, yet her report has reached 
me. But they that have ever realized the charm of "gilt-edged" butter, 
which once tasted makes those who used to spread the thinnest possible skin of 
butter on their bread, afterward eat as much butter as they do bread, will 
realize a still greater charm when the butter is of their own production, and will 
be willing either to keep an extra cow, or to be sparing in the use of the cream 
of the one cow, for the sake of having that luxury all their own, and will think 
nothing of the care that the necessity for purity and cleanliness occasions, 
which, after all, when the routine has become established, is hardly a noticeable 
addition to the house work. Nobody knows but those that have experienced it 



392 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the pleasure and pride to be had in the giving, to less fortunate friends and 
neighbors, of little pats of dewy golden butter made and stamped by one's own 
hand, looking as if the cow that produced that butter were fed only in heavenly 
pastures. 

To crown the whole, the pleasure to be gained in the love and admiration 
of the cow that adds all this comfort to our household arrangements is some- 
thing more than money usually can procure for us — those sleek sides, those 
great moon eyes, those gentle ways, are almost as good in the yard as the daily 
sight of a Cuyp would be in the parlor; and there is something very humanizing 
in the presence and possession of the pretty creature. One grows constantly 
more and more attached to her; and we have seen the little half-bred Jersey, 
bought when a calf for ten dollars, increase her values in her owner's estima- 
tion at such gigantic rates, as month by month went by and that owner reveled 
in the luxury of boasting of her points and her beauty, that there was appar- 
ently not money enough in the world to buy her. 



Pegasus. 

And if one has a cow why should one not have another friend, especially a 
friend to the women of the family, saving them fatigue and throwing the world 
open to them, and making it a world of pleasure ? Once in a while, and more 
often now than of old, we meet with women who really seem to have escaped 
from bond and thrall, in so much as they can drive a horse. Not only that, 
but they can harness him. And not only that, but, if put to the pinch, they 
can take the entire care of him, and not handle him at arm's length, either, 
but familiarly and easily as if he were a kitten, without constant remembrance 
that he has teeth for the sole purpose of biting them, and heels made for noth- 
ing else but kicking. There is a capable woman. She is independent of man. 
She waits on no one's pleasure. She begs and cringes, and is servilely polite 
for the sake of a favor to none. If there is no man handy, no man who can 
leave his work for her uses conveniently, she goes and does the thing herself, 
claps on the harness and claps in the horse, and is off about her business or her 
amusement with no one to say her nay. That which, by submitting to the 
trouble of subduing and training her natural timidity, she has gained, is some- 
thing really almost inestimable in the comfort that the nag affords her, the excur- 
sions within her choice, the freedom and the variety brought into her daily life. 
When left alone in the vehicle, no horse looks round in the woman's face, and 
remarking to himself, apparently, that "it is only she," proceeds to tangle the 
reins, and snarl the traces, and get the breeching where the collar ought to be, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 393 

or other antics as generally impossible ; no horse starts off lame with her in 
hopes of loafing all the way; no horse dares to make the motion of taking the 
bit between his teeth if she holds the reins — he knows she has the bit between 
hers. That woman has, in fact, the freedom of the continent, of the round 
earth, one might say, when Behring Straits are frozen over so that she can 
drive across, for nothing but death and a lack of oats can interfere between her 
and any hostelry at which she chooses to put up. 



The Woman Who Used to Drive. 

Although there are more of this order of women in the world than one 
would think, yet among the whole multitude of married and single they are but 
few. To see the ordinary woman drive is to assist at an experiment in torture ; 
the arms jerk in and out with as steady a motion as the fall of the animal's foot; 
first one rein pulls and then another: a tender mouth in any beast is ruined; a 
comfortable action is so broken that the good horse acquires more gaits, as 
some one has said, than the city of Thebes itself, and the driver, sitting far 
forward, with a terrible eagerness in her eye, especially if another team is com- 
ing, if there is a hill to descend, or if there is any likelihood of being obliged to 
turn about, looms on the sight like the vision the poet saw 

"Most awfully intent, 
The driver of those steeds is forward bent, 
And seems to listen 

to the voice of fate itself, it may be, prophesying overthrow and death if the 
wheels deviate one line from the straight one, while ever and anon a fearful 
phantom looks over her shoulder of that horse down, and she herself sitting on 
his poor head, and the shuddering, heaving bulk suddenly at last shaking her 
off, and rising over her, a night-mare, if it were not in the day. To the appre- 
hension of these women the horse partakes somewhat of the awe-inspiring 
quality of him with whom they are most associated . a portion of the power and 
authority of man himself surrounds him ; he is, in fact, a sort of Centaur ; they 
endow him, in the mind's eye, with an intelligence and with a commanding 
spirit that might belong to some mysterious hippogriff, and they feel when they 
hold the reins that the creature obeys as if they had not anything half so gentle 
as Pegasus in harness, but the horse of Achilles, or the steeds that Phaeton 
failed to drive. To them every horse is the superb and appalling creature that 
Job describes, whose neck is clothed with thunder; and in reality that extra 
strength and power of the beast, which he never uses, and of which he is uncon- 
scious, is the thing that they always expect to assert itself. 



394 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

The Woman Who Drives Now. 

But the woman to whom a horse is but a beast of burden, an intelligence 
entirely subject to her own, a thing to be well treated, a servant to be consid- 
ered, the possessor of no mysterious attributes or of no malevolent inspiration, 
but to be saddled and bridled without any more concern than one has in mak- 
ing a bed — that woman has made life infinitely more convenient and comforta- 
ble than it was before, has created for herself and her companions a thousand 
independent pleasures, has enlarged her sphere almost as much as wings could 
do it, and is mistress of the situation in two-thirds of those cases where other 
women are ''in the hands of their friends." 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 395 



CHAPTER FIFTEENTH 



The Household Conduct. 

Begone, dull care 1 I prithee begone from me, 
Begone, dull care ! Thou and 1 shall never agree ! 

-Playford. 
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools, 
Or if she rules him, never shows she rules. 

—Pope. 

It is better to dwell in the corner of a housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide 
house. — Proverbs. 

She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 

— Proverbs. 
And here's to the housewife that's thrifty. 

— R. B. Sheridan. 

From care I'm free! 
Why aren't they all contented like me? 

La Bayadere 

Economy is the fuel of magnificence. 

— Emerson. 

The primal duties shine aloft, like stars, 

The charities, that soothe, and heal, and bless, 

Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers. 

— Wordsworth. 
And where Care lodges Sleep will never lie. 

— Shakespeare. 

You have too much respect upon the world ; 
They lose it that do buy it With much care. 

— Shakespeare. 
The cares that infest the day 

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away. 

— Longfellow. 
Care will kill a cat, 
And therefore let's be merry. 

If we would have perfect happiness in our house, one of the first things 
we will do is to arrive at a perfect understanding as husband and wife. 
There are two statements very frequently used concerning the married life 



396 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

which must always be peculiarly offensive to those who desire the good of the 
family as an institution of beneficence, and through that of the good of the 
race. One of these statements implies that it is given to the husband to rule; 
the other implies that without seeming to have her own way, the wife quietly 
manages the husband and has it. 

Both of these ideas are as absurd and injudicious as they are harmful. 



The Ideal Household. 

In the ideal household — and every household should at least strive for the 
ideal, however unhappily it falls short of the standard before it — there is no 
such word as rule. Marriage is not a bondage. It is a contract, a partner- 
ship, an association, a union ; and without speaking of it in. relation to the 
decrees of the Church, to all those that enter it reverently it is a sacrament. 
The idea either of reign or of submission in such case is impossible. The 
partners are equal, and each has a separate course to pursue toward one end. 
Because the husband earns or possesses the means necessary for the family's 
subsistence he does not therefore inherently have any more right than the 
wife has to be the absolute owner and ruler of the house. When with the sol- 
emnity of an oath, and with the supposition that it was an oath, he said, " With 
all my worldly goods I thee endow," it could only have meant that from that 
moment the worldly goods alluded to were as much hers as his. 

Being as much hers as his, morally at least, there is exactly as much au- 
thority vested in her by reason of ownership as in him, and he can claim no 
right at all to govern because he earns or owns the money. Moreover, the 
wife is supposed to be doing, and should be doing exactly as much in her 
paths of duty for the benefit of the household of which her husband makes 
one as the husband does ; her services are worth — if a money value could be 
put upon them — as much as his, and so the matter is equal between them. 



Managing and Ruling, 

The only legitimate way for the husband to rule, if he cherishes the 
ignoble wish to rule, is to show his superiority to such degree and extent that 
the wife must needs admiringly see and confess that his opinion, his wish, his 
determination, is the best, and gladly advocate it with him, and follow its 
direction. But to say that the wife must give up her own cherished opinions 
and life-long preconceptions and plan of action is to say that she must be 
reduced to the condition of a slave, entirely unfit to be the mother of children 
or the guardian of their morals, manner, and health — the guardian that it is 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 397 

everywhere understood she has to be ; it is to reduce her to a subordinate 
condition, the result of which is as injurious to her husband and to his chil- 
dren as it is to herself. 

The husband who chooses to make the effort will find that when he ac- 
cords to his wife full acknowledgment of her individuality, and accustoms her 
through all the routine of married life to the same gracious courtesy he used 
to practice at an earlier day, he will have a fearless companion by his side, a 
woman of reflection and judgment, who, having a sense of responsibility and 
accountability to herself, always the sternest of judges, is an actual helpmeet, 
a possible champion, a charming friend, a reasonable assistant, a woman with 
some other entertainment in her than the reflection of his own accustomed 
thoughts, with some novelty and interest ; and so he will find his marriage a 
far finer thing than if he had always a sweet and tiresome little slave at com- 
mand. He will find his own position, too, a something loftier one, for he will 
be the protector and shield and support of one of a nobler order than weak- 
lings, and he gains even in his own esteem by the assumption of that loftier 
character. 

Tyranny and Its Result in Cunning. 

But, again, as detestable as tyranny is cunning ; and it is the invariable 
and necessary accompaniment of tyranny. People, be they men or women, 
wives, or children, or servants — nay, even husbands — if they cannot have 
their own way by fair means, will have it by foul; and unless they are per- 
suaded that what they wish is positively not desirable, they will continue to 
endeavor to obtain that wish if it be a possible thing, and by sly traverses 
and cunning methods. It is only in this way that a wife ever tries to "man- 
age" her husband. And it is in this way that she makes herself as wily as the 
serpent in Eden, and develops qualities of deceit and craft that cannot help 
being transmitted to her children. The mother who desires to lower the 
human standard, who wants her children to be in the way of themselves be- 
coming the parents of thieves and criminals, will only have to resort to man- 
aging her husband in order to sow the first seeds of that sort of crop. 

There is something too base and servile in the idea of "managing," of 
obtaining a desire by the hidden and circuitous routes of cunning, for a 
woman who aspires to any worthiness of character to be willing to confess to 
it even in her own consciousness. Open revolt were better in the long run 
for her, for her family, for her race. The trick is on a par with lying, with 
stealing, with forging, and with all the low, small, slimy vices ; it is degrad- 
ing, not only to the woman who engages in the "management," but to the 
jchildren, servants, and dependents who can not fail to see it done. 



39 8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Working Together. 

The only noble and honorable course for husband and wife, then, is 
co-operation, with frank admission of the individual rights of each, with the 
same course that would be followed in independent friendship, with repeated 
assurance of love, anc trust, and undiminished affection — assurance that every 
true wife wishes and longs for when she is seventy as much as when she is 
thirty, that ought not to pall upon any husband. The wife may be guided, 
but she is not to be governed, and when she is consulted, trusted, treated as 
an integer, and as a person to the full as honorable and powerful as her hus- 
band is, the home will be something very different from the harem, and very 
much nearer heaven than any place full of submissive houris could ever pre- 
tend to be. Let there be no ruling and no managing, and there will come 
presently the ideal household, a place full of joyous endeavor, of fortitude 
in suffering, of glad fruition and content the life long. 

But even in the ideal household there will be household cares. In the 
variation of Blackmore's charming black-bird's song the strain goes, 
"'Whistle, father birdie, whistle household cares away. 
Household cares woald turn me soon from blackbird to a gray," 

and there is not a woman who reads it or hears it without in her soul saying 
4 'mother birdie" in correction and realizing that household cares are doing 
that discoloring work for her, and have been ever since she undertook them. 



Daily Cares. 

It makes little difference with her, either, in the matter, whether she is 
the wife of a rich or of a poor man, unless she is of the mind and estate of 
those who employ a housekeeper, and are themselves a sort of "lady boarder" 
in the house ; that is, having shifted all responsibility, and having retained 
only the right to find fault, in which case the question only changes form and 
not nature, as the housekeeper is the one to turn gray under the ceaseless irri- 
tation of the household cares, instead of herself. But women able to hire a 
housekeeper in this country are numerically but one in ten thousand, if so 
many ; and frequently those who are able prefer to have the charge of their 
own house, and to render account of their own stewardship; and others, 
again, do not desire the too familiar presence of a third party whom they con- 
sider neither quite equal nor quite servant. 



The Hired Housekeeper. 

Something of this latter feeling in relation to the hired housekeeper 
tnisfht be overcome if those who take the position— people usually who have 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



399 




THE IDEAL HOUSEHOLD. 



been in better circumstances, and learned how to do for others by ruling their 
own kingdoms — would take it for granted that it is understood they are as 
much "ladies," technically speaking, as their employers are; that the position 
and the duties of making a home comfortable are no more derogatory to their 
dignity than keeping a school or practicing any other profession — since we 
might almost say that fine housekeeping is one of the learned professions — 
and that being understood, it is not necessary to be all the time asserting it 
and insisting upon it, feeling hurt if a family prefer to be by themselves, or 



4 oo STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

if morning visits paid to them and invitations extended to them do not also 
include the housekeeper. Every housekeeper who in taking her situation 
stipulates for her own little parlor and her own table makes herself a separate 
family in the family, with her own friends, visits, and interests, solves the 
question of equality and of intrusion, reduces it absolutely to one of business, 
saves herself the possibility of slights and hurts and becomes in the house the 
next valuable consideration to the strong-box. 



The Strong Box. 

It is the strong-box, after all, that is at the root of a good deal of the 
household difficulty ; it is the perpetual grasping for the coin that eludes the 
fingers, the endeavor to make bricks without straw. Women have a natural 
pride in their homes, poor or rich, and in their administration of the provi- 
sion made by their husbands. They think themselves culpable if they miss a 
point in the possibilities of that administration, in the wasting of a crust by 
oversight, in the breaking of a dish by carelessness, in the soiling of wall or 
carpet or garment by neglect, in the absence of the stitch in time that saves 
nine in the matter of clothes, in the use of the ounce of prevention worth a 
pound of cure in the matter of health and doctors. Perhaps their husbands 
think them culpable, too, in such case ; certainly the neighbors do ; and quite 
as often as because it is right, or as for the applause of the neighbors, is the 
work done from fear of the husband's reproaches. Yet it is to be owned that 
the applause of the neighbors has a world of influence upon these household 
cares that turn one from a blackbird to a gray. If this wealthier acquaint- 
ance has a " second girl" to aid her in keeping up an " apple-pie order," one 
must wear one's self out to get in one's own house with one's own hands the 
same apple-pie arrangement ; if that too industrious neighbor has her house- 
cleaning over in March, one dares not be behind lest one be found a laggard, 
and accused of want of system, or ambition, or right feeling, even although it 
had been better to defer the cleansing process till the muddy season were 
gone, or till the dust of furnace fires, together with the old jollity of the open 

ones, 

"Down that dark hole in the floor 
Staggers and is seen no more." 

And if a third equally forehanded one has made her currant jelly * 'before 
the Fourth, " one must follow suit, although headaches hang in the air like 
trip-hammers ready to fall in one's brain, and although one has to run in debt 
for the sugar, and be harassed about the increased grocer's bill, till one is half 
sick from that also, and from all the kindred apprehensions, when that half- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 401 

sickness is felt, of dying prematurely, and leaving the children to the care of 
some necessary step-mother, or of leaving them without a house over their 
heads, anyway, to wait by-and-by on those who have been wont to regard 
them as their betters. And if yet another friend has her woollen carpets 
rolled away in summer, and straw mattings laid in their place, and double win- 
dows put in in the winter weather, and fires kept everywhere, and numberless 
other luxuries that could be dispensed with, one trembles lest one's husband 
should be suspected of penury, or of inability to provide, or of indifference to 
the home comfort, and one goes without something necessary, and has the 
luxury out of hand, or so much of it as possible. The person who said, "Give 
me the luxuries, and I care not who has the necessaries, of life," uncon- 
sciously struck the keynote of some of the bitterest of household cares. 

Yet none of these, literally speaking, are the genuine household cares. 
One need feel little interest in those which proceed from pride and vanity 
and pique. Those onty with which we have a right to concern ourselves are 
the cares which are inherent to the average house, and have to be encountered 
whether or no. Perhaps even these cares are taken too seriously, and the 
household care-taker does not rely implicitly enough on the sense of justice 
that, seeing she does her best, will not expect of her the impossible. What 
if it is sweeping day, or baking day, or preserving day, if she rises in the 
morning with a headache it is headache day, and unless she wants another 
and a worse one in a hurry, she must give up everything to that headache, 
otherwise she is wasting health and strength, and her husband's and her 
family's substance, as well as her own, for the sake of a habit or a petty pride 
of routine. If sometimes she could bring herself, on seeing a spider's web, 
let us say, to suffer it to remain a while longer, against the next time the chil- 
dren cut their fingers, perhaps it would not be held as so very heinous an act 
as to deserve punishment in the final settlement. But the fact is, it would 
annoy her more to know that the cobweb was hanging there than it would to 
make the effort of taking it away. It is impossible for this natural care-taker 
to avoid fulfilling the object of her being, and taking care; and the only 
remedy is for her supposed protector, or whoever it is, that is, that has the 
power to do it, and to whom her life and brain are valuable, or who feels a 
pit)^ for the overworked, to force upon her, if she will not take it otherwise, 
a month's yearly separation from her family, and every one and everything 
connected with it. 

A Vacation. 

She will come home from it a new creature ; and even if she find a little 
additional work waiting to her hands, the strength of body and mind gained 



4 02 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

will make that work seem light, and it will pay in actual cost and comfort all 
but the most slenderly provided to try the experiment. After one or two of 
these yearly vacations she will herself so feel the worth of them that she will 
dispense with things to display before the neighbors for the sake of the 
healthy relaxation, will do her utmost to arrange a corresponding change for 
her husband, and will even come to think that if there is no other way of pro- 
viding the outing, the need of it should receive the attention of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 



School for Cooks. 



The chief of the household cares is always the cook. She is very seldom 
in the ordinary family, or in that of narrow means, what she should be, and 
her shortcomings do a great deal to bring about the change from the black 
bird to the gray. There is one way to overcome her incompetency that I have 
often wondered was not more generally pursued. There exist now in most of 
our larger cities good and effective training schools for servants of all classes 
and capacities; and, besides these, various persons of skill and renown in 
culinary matters advertise lessons in cookery; standing ready, on certain 
afternoons of the week, to impart to the class of the hour all that they know 
on the subject, even announcing in their advertisements the dishes to be pre- 
pared that day — fifty cents admission, and sometimes not so much. 

Now it is possible that the mistress who complains of her cook — ana com- 
plains not so much because she herself is disappointed in the toothsome dishes 
attempted and ruined in her kitchen, as for the sake of husband and friends — 
may know how to prepare every dish that these professors and advertising 
teachers do. But she may not have the time or the health or the disposition 
to go into the kitchen and teach their concoction, or other reasons may render 
it impossible. And just as likely she does not know how to prepare them ; 
she was learning to play the piano which her parents wished her to learn to 
play, and was not taught kitchen-work ; she was dancing, and receiving and 
making calls, and leading a gay life, never expecting to need the knowledge 
for which she should always be able to pay, and tor which she may be able to 
pay now, if she can get it for money ; or she chose the more congenial work 
of teaching what she had learned in school; of painting, or designing, or en- 
graving; or she was obliged to earn her living in tending shop, in dress-mak- 
ing, and kindred employments — and with it all had no opportunity to acquire 
skill in the domestic art? Whatever was the reason, it was supposedly a 
righteous one, or seemed righteous at the time it influenced her action. And 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 403 

whether that is the case or not does not affect the fact that her cook is a poor 
one, and that there is a way of making her a good one. For the professors of 
cookery have made it a business to inform themselves thoroughly; they know 
how to do the best thing, and they know the best way of doing it ; they not 
only know all the flummeries and fancy affairs of the fine art of cooking, but 
the solid A B C of the common domestic dinner. 

What then, is easier, if one's cook is not all in skill and information that 
she should be than to send her through a course of these lessons that she may 
become so? At the first blush the suggestion arouses, in some degree, a 
sense of injustice at being obliged to pay for the article and yet not to have 
it, and in order to get it, to do what seems like paying for it a second time. 
One feels that no cook, being a human creature, with knowledge of right and 
wrong, should engage to do certain work unless she knows how to do it, and 
should have a conscience about it all herself. We have known of some who 
did, and who privately took measures to attend such affairs as these class les- 
sons. But it is self-evident that cooks cannot afford such extravagance out of 
their own pockets ; and if you want a thing badly yourself, you will pay for it 
even if it does cost more than honor and justice warrant. 

If then, every city mistress who feels the need of it in her kitchen will 
spare her cook on one or two afternoons of every week, and send her, not at 
the cook's expense, but at her own, to take at least one course of cookery les- 
sons, and afterward such lessons as propose to teach other yet needed things, 
one part of the bad business would be mended. 



A Radical Procedure. 

It is a rather radical procedure, but, as radical things profess to do, it 
strikes at the root. The ordinary idea is that if anybody is to take lessons, it 
should be the mistress, and that, besides, no sooner will the cook be taught 
than she will demand higher wages or be leaving. But in answer to such 
arguments it is to be said that if the mistress wished to do the cooking she 
would not send the cook to learn, and if she does not wish to do the cooking, 
and does wish for the cook, it is for her interest to have the cook, and not her- 
self, learn the art. It would be a foolish waste of material for her to learn it, 
and stay in the parlor. An reste there is nothing usually to hinder her from 
taking lessons also, if she desires. 

And for the other matter, that of the cook's demands for wages and 
threats of leaving, that would have to be arranged by agreement, and if the 
cook left at unreasonably short notice after having received the lessons, the 



4 o 4 STEPPING STONES ^O HAPPINESS. 

price would have to be repaid from wagto due. But usually a grateful serv- 
ant and a pleased family could make a compact that each party would regard 
as sacred, and would agree to agree together as long as one needs a place and 
the other needs a maid. 

It is scarcely to be expected that the great body of servant-girls should, of 
their own accord, rise and patronize the cooking professor in a mass. But one 
mistress would set the example to another ; they would find themselves able 
to afford the extra expense by going without something else for the time be- 
ing, in consideration of the advantages ; and one servant would carry the tale 
to the next, who would hate to be outdone. 

And as we throw a stone into a lake, and see the ripple spread through 
circle after circle, from centre to farthest edge, so the first mistress who de- 
nies herself some costlier whim or other in order to give to her cook, who, 
however faithful and willing, is at present but the modest apprentice, the full 
scope and compass of her trade, will have effected a revolution in that world 
which is founded on the kitchen, and will have turned the organism there 
from darkness and dirt and confusion to sweetness and light and order. 



Old Cookery Books. 

But if the mistress sets out to study the subject and art of cookery itself 
in all its bearings, she will find some interesting reading on her way. From 
any great library she can secure a collection of old-fashioned cookery books 
that will afford her amusement if not instruction. These books are not 
merely those full of "Mrs. A. 's this,'* and "Madame B.'s that, " but such as 
the entertaining Dr. Kichener's, the wise and witty Brillat Savarin's, and the 
work of the famous Mrs. Glasse, with her descriptions of "a curious way" to 
concoct a dish, "a pretty way of stewing chicken," or others where you come 
across such phrases as "as mellow as marrow," or where directions to "pickle 
a buttocky beef," to make a "Carolina rice pudding," and "an approved 
method practiced by Mrs. Dukeley, the Queen's tyre-woman, to preserve hair 
and make it grow thick," are all huddled on the same page, and where the 
spelling is "salamongundy, " "asturtion," and "camphire. " One of the most 
amusing of all the old cooks, who called themselves "artists," is M. Ude. 
"Take," he says, "one or two live eels; throw them into the fire; as they are 
twisting about on all sides lay hold of them, with a towel in your hand, and 
skin them from head to foot. This is the only means of drawing out all the 
oil, which is unpalatable and indigestible Several reviews, " he exclaims, in- 
dignantly, in a later edition, "have accused me of cruelty because I recom- 
mend in this work that eels should be burned alive. As my knowledge in 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 40$ 

Cookery is entirely devoted to the gratification of taste and the preservation 
of health, I consider it my duty to attend to what is essential to both." His 
indignation, however, is elsewhere equaled by his sense of any violation of 
the proprieties. "Remember that the word 'soup' is so vulgar as not to be ad- 
mitted either in good company or on a good bill of fare," he remarks, proba- 
bly preferring "puree" and "consomme." But, with all that, the little French- 
man has a certain democratic sense of his own dignity ; he fully expresses his 
contempt for certain young British noblemen whom cooks are likely to en- 
counter. " Do not be frightened by their repulsive manners," he says, gran- 
diloquently. " Never mind. Do as I have done." 

Another cook of a less original cast of mind is old Robert May, of the 
seventeenth century, a man who used musk for one of his flavorings, and all 
of whose recipes, of an era before any of the French refinements, were on such 
a gigantic scale that one might think him cooking for the lower gods, or at the 
least for an army of Goths feasting after battle. For the curiosity of it, the 
reader should glance over his way of preparing what he calls an ' ' Olio Pod- 
rida. " "Take," he directs, "Pipkin or pot, some three gallons, fill it with fair 
water, and set it over a fire of charcoals, and put in first your hardest meats, a 
rump of beef, bolonia sausages, neats' tongues, two dry and two green, about 
two hours after the pot is boiled and scummed ; but put in more presently 
after your beef is scummed, mutton, venison, pork, bacon, all the foresaid in 
gubbins, as big as a duck's egg, in equal pieces; put in also carrots, turnips, 
onions, cabbidge, in good big pieces, as big as your meat, a faggot of sweet 
herbs well bound up, and some whole spinage, sorrel, burrage, endive, mari- 
gold, and other good pothearbs a little chopped ; and sometimes French bar- 
ley, or lupins, green or dry. 

"Then, a little before you dish out \ our olio, put to your pot cloves, mace, 
saffron, etc. 

"Then next have divers fowls; as first, a goose or turkey, two capons, two 
ducks, two pheasants, two widgeons, four partridges, four stock-doves, four 
teals, eight snites, twenty-four quails, forty-eight larks. 

"Boil these foresaid fowls in water and salt in a pan, pipkin, or pot. 

"Then have bread, marrow, bottoms of artichokes, yolks of hard eggs, large 
mace, chestnuts boiled and blanched, two colliflowers, saffron. 

"And stew these in a pipkin together, being ready clenged with some good 
sweet butter, a little white-wine, and strong broth. 

"Some other times for variety you may use beets, potatoes, skirrets, 
pistaches, pineapple seed or almonds, poungarnet, and lemons. 

"Now to dish your olio, dish first your beef, veal, or pork; then your veni- 
son and mutton, tongues, sausage, and roots over all. 



4 o6 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

" Then next your largest fowl, land-fowl or sea-fowls, as first, a goose or 
turkey, two capons, two pheasants, four ducks, four widgeons, four stock- 
doves, four partridges, eight teals, twelve snites, twenty-four quails, forty- 
eight larks, etc. 

"Then broth it, and put on your pipkin of colly flowers, artichokes, chest- 
nuts, some sweetbreads fried, yolks of hard eggs, then marrow boild in strong 
broth or water, large mace, saffron, pistaches, and all the foresaid things be- 
ing finely stewed up, and some red beets over all, slict lemons and lemon peels 
whole, and run it over with beaten butter. 

"For the garnish of this dish make marrow pies, made like round chew- 
its;" and the garnish goes on to an extent almost as elaborate as the original 
dish. It is a miracle that any one, unless provided with a strong brain and a 
sound stomach, should read this recipe, much less eat of its results, without 
an attack of indigestion. 

A noticeable feature in the pages of these writers is the way they despise 
all the world that is not engaged in cookery. They make brief forays, every 
once in a while, into dominions foreign to their own art, as if to show their 
capability in other directions, and hence their right to speak ; but they return 
to the matter in hand with a gusto that makes the mouth water, and they take 
care to exhibit the time-honored bad temper of a good cook, that is, as it were, 
a certificate of character, whether the heat of the fires or of the spices is so ex- 
citing to the nerves, or whether they are overcome by their thought of the 
habitual waste of good material by others. 

The home-made cookery book is, however, often quite as entertaining as 
the antiques, and in itself as much of an "Olio Podrida" of recipes as old May 
could get up of comestibles. Nevertheless, it is an excellent plan for every 
housekeeper, old or young, to write out the formula of any dish that pleases 
her palate or the palates of her family, for cooks change and memories are de- 
ceitful, and once set down in black and white, there it is always to refer to, 
and much that would escape is put in preservation, and handed down from 
mother to daughter, till it becomes apart of the family archives, and substan- 
tiates the claim to the nice manner of life and generous table of one's ances- 
tors. For it is plain to see that the family which made a practice of cherishing 
daintily compounded dishes for its table had occasion for them, and lived 
otherwise, most probably, in a style to correspond with them, taking hold of 
life in a different fashion from those families that had no table repertoire be- 
yond the fried steak or the boiled cabbage, and knew nothing of the French 
science of dressing beans to imitate either roast beef or ice-cream at discre- 
tion. 

As she goes on, the reader of these old cookery books will find that the 




BANQUET OF VITELLIUS. 



4 o8 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

banqueting of her forbears was a very different thing frcm that of to-day. For 
when the table is set with lace and satin and damask and embroideries, with 
engraved crystal, silver and gold, candles, china as beautiful as jewels, with 
banks of flowers, and all the latest whims of decoration, the dinner-givers of 
the present think they have done the utmost there is to do in the way of or- 
nate splendor, and the rest goes without saying and according to the prevail- 
ing custom, a rational and refined feast among dinner-givers costing from ten 
to fifty dollars a plate. 

Ancient Feasts, 

What would these worthy and generous hosts have said, then, at the feasts 
of Vitellius, who in seven months spent on his table a sum equivalent to thir- 
ty-five million dollars; at a time, too, when money was more valuable than it 
is to-day! Lucullus also must have been able to give them points in the art 
of banqueting, when he never had a supper in his room of Apollo at a less cost 
than eighty thousand dollars. And was it not Apicius — one of the three — 
who had a dish made of the brains of five hundred ostriches, and the tongues 
of five thousand birds that had been taught to speak? There was an old Ro- 
man cook in the days of these gourmets and gourmands who, with a vanity 
unrivaled by any other writer in history, save and except M. Ude, declared : 
" Assuredly I have discovered ambrosia. Had the dead but the faculty o p 
smelling, the fragrance of my compositions should speedily restore them to 
health and strength." Doubtless this discovery of his was washed down with 
old Falernian or with smoky Greek wines ; and in the eight or ten delicate va- 
rieties of bottled sunshine and dew, whose clusters of dainty glasses ornament 
the table as much as the flowers do, our later diners have the advantage. 

But the mediaeval banquet was a very different thing from the ancient 
banquet, which with all its prodigality, was a thing of art beside the other. 
For the mediaeval banquet was a perpetual effort for the prodigious, and the 
men and women who feasted at it might have had something about them of 
the bestial and the god combined had their appetites really required any such 
feeding. The most poetical thing we have ever come across in accounts of 
their festivity, if it can be called poetical, was the pillar erected at the corona- 
tion of Cceur de Lion, a hollow marble pillar on steps, and on the top a gilt 
eagle, under whose claws, in the capital of the pillar, were divers kinds of 
wines gushing forth at different places all the daylong, of which all who came, 
were they ever so poor and abject, were at liberty to drink. At another feast, 
that given at the marriage of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of the 
third Edward, to Violantis, the daughter of Gelasius II., Duke of Milan — a 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 409 

feast one of whose guests was Petrarch — there were thirty courses, and be- 
tween every course wonderful presents were distributed. "There were in one 
only course seventy goodly horses, adorned with silks and silver furniture; 
and in the others silver vessels, falcons, hounds, armor for horses, costly 
coates of mayle, breastplates glittering of massive Steele, helmets and corslets 
decked with costly crestes, apparell distinct with costly jewels, souldiers' gir- 
dles, and lastly certain gemmes by curious art set in gold, and of purple and 
cloth of gold for men's apparell in great abundance. And such was the sump- 
tuousness of that banquet, that the meates which were brought from the table 
would sufficiently have served ten thousand men." Compared with this 
wholesale gift business, the presents, however delectable, distributed as fav- 
ors at recent germans and dinners must make, after all, but a beggarly array. 



The Peacock at Banquets. 

At all banquets, both of the elder and of the middle ages, the peacock was 
a favorite piece of decoration. Sometimes it was quite covered with leaf -gold, 
as if that were an improvement upon its brilliant dyes, and with a bit of 
linen in its mouth, dipped in spirits and set on fire, it was served on a golden 
dish by the lady of highest rank, attended by her train of maidens and followed 
by music, and was set before the most distinguished guest. This was a per- 
formance of great state and ceremony, and the bird was held in so far sacred 
that oaths could be taken on its head. One of the old turnspit directors gives 
us full information as to another and certainly handsomer way of serving the 
creature, although one may be pardoned for querying how it was contrived 
afterward to carve him: "At a feeste roiall pecokkes shall be dight on this 




410 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

manner. Take and flee off the skynne with the fedurs, tayle, and nekke, and 
the hed thereon ; then take the skyn with all the fedurs and lay hit on a table 
abrode, and st.rawe thereon grounden comyn ; then take the pecokke and roste 
hym, and endore (baste) him with rawe yolkes of egges; and when he is rosted 
take hym off and let hym cole awhile, and take and sowe hym in his skyn, and 
gilde his combe, and so serve hym forthe with the last cours. " 

But whatever may be thought of the decoration of the tables as in com- 
parison with those of our own era, or of the character of the prodigal squan- 
dering of food and drink, or of the manners and customs of the time in gen- 
eral, one rather amusing first course of a period as late as 1630 is reported to 
us by Robert May in his Accomplislit Cooke — a book dedicated to Lords 
Mountague, Lumley, and Dorner, and to the Right Worshipful Sir Kenelm 
Digby, so well known to the nation for their admired hospitalities, as the writer 
says, which interlude, as the writer further sets forth, was formerly one of the 
delights of the nobility before good housekeeping had left England. 



A Battle at Table. 

Among his Triumphs and Tropliies in Cookery, this good-natured lit- 
tle author gives instructions for the manufacture of a pasteboard ship, with 
flags and streamers and guns, and little trains of powder added after it has 
been covered with a coarse paste and baked, certain portions of it gilded, and 
the whole planted in a dish full of blown egg-shells filled with rose-water and 
set in salt. Opposite this is to be a castle similarly manufactured, with tur- 
rets and battlements, and drawbridges and "percullises. " Between the two is 
a stag, compounded in like fashion again, with an arrow in his side, and his 
body full of claret. Two pies then are baked, and after baking the lids are 
lifted, and one is filled with live frogs and the other with live birds. Then, 
all being set at table, the trains of powder are lighted, and the castle fires upon 
the ship, and the ship returns the fire, and the arrow is plucked from the stag, 
whereon the claret flows like life-blood from the wound. "All danger being 
seemingly over by this time, you may suppose they will desire to see what 
is in the pies ; when, lifting first the lid off one pie, out skips some frogs, 
which makes the ladies to skip and shreek, and. after the othei pie, whence 
comes out the birds, who, by a natural instinct flying at the light, will put out 
the candles; so that what with the flying birds and skipping frogs, the one 
above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole 
company. At length the candles are lighted, and. a banquet brought in ; the 
musick sounds ; and every one with much delight and content rehearses their 
actions in the former passages." Certainly people who were pleased by such 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 411 

tomfoolery as this would think very poorly of our tame and quiet manner of 
ministering to the senses, and were best regaled by mighty sides of venison, 
by oxen roasted whole, and by copious washes of strong beer; their coarsened 
palates could have seen no difference between Chateau Yquem or sparkling 
Moselle and any diet drink. We may not reach the mad point of luxury of 
Lucullus and Apicius, although we are fain to see no especial luxury in the 
brains of peacocks and the tongues of nightingales, but, on the contrary, a 
vulgar brutality ; but we have certainly improved upon the ways of our own 
more immediate ancestors in abolishing powder trains and jumping frogs 
from the table. 

But if we have not rivaled the prodigality of the ancients, we have in this 
country of ours allowed ourselves great latitude of lesser but almost as real ex- 
travagance, and we are only now beginning to comprehend the wasteful man- 
ner in which for a century and a half at least, we have been living, and to feel 
the need of an economy that shall make the most of such provision as we 
have, and carry it farthest. In the earlier years of the settlement of the con- 
tinent the food supply was on a different basis from that on which it was 
afterward placed, and during that time the home traditions, those of Mother 
England, were in full play. In a few families these have descended, and are 
recognized as binding to-day, many a stern woman having tyrannized over her 
son's wife till she has in her turn felt the authority of the family tradition, 
and thanked Heaven and her mother-in-law therefor. But in the larger num- 
ber of families the greater and still growing abundance of food soon destroyed 
the sense of any necessity to save and spare, and a prodigal carelessness and 
wastefulness was the result, which has been continued till to-day. 



Some Economies. 

Doubtless it takes very much more time to practice these economies than 
it would to let them pass, and continue to live with spendthrift ease ; but it is 
questionable if in most instances the time would be any better spent, while 
the result is tangible and desirable. It is said that there is enough substance 
thrown away and squandered in American families to keep the moderate French 
or English family; and although that is probably an exggerated statement, 
there is a moral in it. The American marketer buys usually the best; it ap- 
pears upon her table once, is sometimes warmed over for a second dish or for a 
breakfast, sometimes not, and Bridget does as she pleases with the fragments, 
either giving or throwing them away. An English woman buys, let us say, a 
roasting piece of beef ; she, too, buys the best, because, as she will use it, it 



412 STEPPING STONE TO HAPPINESS. 

Is the cheapest. The upper cut makes uu^ day's dinner handsomely; the un- 
der cut, in thin slices, carved across instead of up and down, fried in butter, 
and served on mashed potatoes or on rice, garnishing the dish to make it seem 
like something choicer, and add to appetite, makes a second dinner; then the 
long end piece, which has remained untouched, makes an excellent stew with 
tomatoes or carrots and potato balls for a third dinner, being cooked and 
cooled so as to remove the grossness, and then warmed up again; the various 
fragments either make a pie, or, hashed and spiced or curried, answer for a 
fourth dinner, which will be pieced out, as one may say, by a rather daintier 
dessert than usual, as the case will be also with the fifth dinner — a soup of the 
bones that remain, made hearty with vegetables; and, after all, there is left a 
store of invaluable dripping. The American housewife in comfortable cir- 
cumstances who should make five dinners for a moderate family from a roast 
of beef would, until recently, have considered herself a scrimping and shabby 
woman, and would fear being held by her neighobrs, well-informed through 
the servants, as a niggardly skinflint. Now, on the contrary, she is inclined 
to look about and see if she can not better instruction, and procure a sixth 
dish from the same source. 



The English Woman's Economy. 

But there are various other ways in which the Englishwoman can give 

us lessons in economy. It is safe to say that nothing is wasted under her 

care. Even her stale beer is saved to rinse her bronzes in, to boil with other 

material and make her old plate look like new, and to clean her soiled black 

silks; and the lemons whose outer skin has been grated off, and whose juice 

has been squeezed out, if they are not laid aside to boil in any compound, are 

given to the cook to clean her saucepans. If she keeps fowl, every egg 

brought in is dated with a pencil, and those of the earlier date are used first; 

if there are any to be spared, she lays them by for winter provision, usually 

by passing over them a cameFs-hair pencil dipped in oil, which hermetically 

seals and preserves their contents, and where she uses only the whites in one 

dish, she contrives another in which she shall use the yolks. If the bread 

has become dry, she does not immediately throw it to the hens or dedicate it 

to a pudding; she dips the loaf in hot water, and sets it in the oven, and finds 

it sufficiently fresh for family use. Nor does she often indulge in the doubt- 

iul luxury of baker's bread, since she has learned that she thereby loses in 

bread just the weight of the water used in compounding it, besides running 

the risk of deleterious ingredients ftnd when the bread is really dried past 

freshening then it answers for scuffing, is grated for crumbs, or is soaked 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 413 

with milk and beaten eggs for puddings; none of it is thrown away. She 
is equally economical concerning the ham ; when no more slices can be cut 
from the bone, there is yet a small quantity of dry meat upon it that would 
seem to most of our housekeepers as something rather worthless. Not so to 
this good woman ; it is dried a little further, and then grated from the bone, 
and put away in jars, to be taken out and seasoned on requirement for the en- 
richment of omelets, for spreading upon savory dishes of toast which make a 
nice addition to breakfast or lunch, for stuffing olives, and making sand- 
wiches, after which grating the bone serves to flavor soup. In the same 
way she grates her cheese that is too dry or near the rind, using it afterward 
as a relish, or as a dressing to macaroni or other substance. All bones, mean- 
while, as well as the ham bone, are objects of care with her, or with the serv- 
ants whom she has trained to her will, and are regularly boiled down to add 
the result to the stock pot for gravies and soups, by which means she pro- 
cures the latter at almost no cost at all. Whenever she has a few slices of 
heterogeneous cold meats, she has countless palatable ways of using them — 
deviled, broiled in a batter, scalloped, minced into croquettes or mayonnaisss. 
As a general although not universal thing, among ourselves, when these 
stray bits and bones are not thrown away, they are given away ; but the latter 
is not the English woman's idea of charity; she holds that the poor, unac- 
customed to dainty food, find a coarser kind quite as agreeable as the leavings 
of her table; she prepares especially for them, saving all liquors in which 
meats have been boiled as a base for broths of barley and pease, that are 
regularly dispensed, with tea leaves and coffee grounds dried over, and from 
which a second draught can be made, with oatmeal, vegetables, and dripping. 
Dripping, by-the-way, forms no inconsiderable item in this sort of economy; 
it is skimmed from every pot and saved from every pan, and when a sufficient 
quantity accumulates it is clarified by pouring boiling water upon it, mixing 
it well, and putting it by to "set,'* the sediment going to the bottom when 
cold, leaving a hard clean cake, which is useful on domestic occasions where 
butter or lard would be used, as the "shortening" of meat-pie crusts and 
gingerbread, and for common basting and frying. 



Saving on a Small Scale. 

Some housekeepers, to be sure, who are able to live more sumptuously, 
abandon this to the cook, by whom it is claimed as a perquisite, and valued 
as an equivalent of large extra wages. Beyond this system of saving on a 
-small scale and doing it so regularly and so precisely that it becomes second 



4 i 4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

nature, and is done with as little extra thought as there is given to the paring 
of the potatoes, the English housekeeper goes further, in dealing out to her 
servants the week's allowance of sugar, rice, flour, coffee, and all other house- 
hold provision that is kept in quantity, and requiring an account of it all to 
be rendered, the thing having been brought to so fine a point that she knows 
the exact amount of each article requisite for her family, allowing so much to 
each individual, and that quantity being sufficient, as she knows by experi- 
ence; two ounces of tea, for instance, being regarded as a week's supply for 
each single individual, one-half pound of sugar, three and one-half pounds of 
meat for a woman and five and one-quarter for a man — facts which the house- 
keeper probably learned from her mother, and she from her mother before 
her — knowing, moreover, that the greater variety of food offered diminishes 
the quantity of the simpler kinds required. All of these stores she sets down 
in her housekeeping book as she gives them out, and she does not fail on the 
next dispensing day to consult her dates, and if anything be left over in the 
cook's hands not accounted for, to subtract that from the amount to be newly 
issued. And in England servants expect this ; so far from being indignant 
with it, they would feel as if there were no guiding hand behind them were it 
left undone, and they given their head in an overflowing store-room, as ser- 
vants are with us. In fact, there is no saving which the housewife across the 
water considers too small to practice, or as beneath her dignity ; and when 
we shall have followed her example in her pet economies more generally than 
we follow it at present, we shall have more right and more ability to indulge 
ourselves in our pet extravagances otherwise. 



Old Dishes. 

And in addition to such economies there are others to be made in con- 
sidering and possibly adopting a good many valuable dishes which are either 
in bad repute for no good reason as coarse articles of food, or are forgotten 
and only to be seen in those old families that have preserved their traditions. 
We should be able to increase our variety somewhat if we occasionally re- 
membered them, or looked about us and made inquiries in the old mansions 
or hovels concerning them. Who can not call to mind some one of those old 
dwellings where the mistress does as her grandmother did before her, with 
her potpourri of rose leaves in the old china jug, in the one case in the par- 
lor, and in the other in the kitchen, with crook-necks over the high shelf, and 
long strings of tiny savory onions hanging about them, only one at a time of 
the choice things to be used for adding flavor to some dish, and all of them, 
if one looked with the same eye to grace and tint, an ornament of beauty past 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 415 

buying? In among them will be the bunches of herbs — the pot-herbs of fen- 
nel and parsley, the sweet herbs that distil faint perfume on the air with every 
waft of the steam beneath them, thyme, sage, mint, marjoram, and sweet- 
basil, and all of them, though now but kitchen herbs, once parts of ancient 
song and verse. There, also, will be the dried bulbs of the purple orchis 
which in heat and thunder keep the milk from souring. On the fire, per- 
haps, a curious preparation will be simmering — greens, but tender and need- 
ing no vinegar or dressing, as they are the common sorrel leaves stewed in 
no water, but in their own juice, and seasoned to the fancy; or perhaps a pot 
of dhal will be bubbling — split peas with curry, bits of onion and butter, and 
"three cloves chopped fine." On this same fire it is not at all unlikely that a 
dish of sour-krout may be in preparation, sweet and odorless, and wondering 
at the bad name it has in the world, made with such care to renew its brine 
frequently, and its linen cover being so often rinsed that it has none but an 
appetizing smell; if it is in the summer, too, hop tops will be boiling in a lit- 
tle flat pan as a sort of substitute for asparagus, for however well-to-do in the 
world now the family may be, the traditions of a time when inventive genius 
had to apply itself to turn everything to account are still preserved with 
them. If you look in the store-room of any such house you will find an odd 
array of jars; there will be a pot of coarse " carrageen moss" picked up on 
some afternoon excursion to the sea-beach, and cleansed and dried for blanc- 
mange', there will be strange pickles, samphire whose little pulpy red reeds 
have been covered with hot vinegar and spices, gathered on the marshes, no 
longer with the dangers that accompanied its plucking in the time of the 
crazed old Lear : 

"The crows and choughs that winged the midway air 

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down 

Hangs one that gathers samphire — dreadful trade! 

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head." 

Here, too, are bottles of the nasturtium seeds that answer all the pur- 
poses of foreign capers, and cost nothing. There are pots of the Jerusalem 
artichoke, too, so called by corrupting its own pretty name of Girasole, be- 
cause the plant producing it turns always toward the sun ; and here are jars 
of East India sauces and pickles all made at home, but with such cunning dis- 
guise and deceit of raw ginger, red peppers, garlic, turmeric, and mustard 
that only the trained palate knows the difference. Preserves and sweetmeats, 
also, of unaccustomed sorts will appear here — a rhubarb marmalade, one of 
the red Malta orange, the blood orange that grows from a graft of orange on 
pomegranate, another of green orange peel that brings the whole tropics about 
the taster, mulberry sirup for sore throats, Normandy biffens, or apples 



416 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

shriveled in the oven, to be stewed in the winter days; jars of candied lemon 
peel, and of a foreign flavored jam made of the red lips of the wild-rose 
bushes, stewed and strained and sweetened and strengthened with a dash of 
spirit, something, perhaps, after the pattern of the old rose conserve of the 
Venetians; flasks of noyau made of honey and peach kernels; and another 
home-made cordial — a maraschino-like thing of beech leaves steeped in sirup, 
gin, and sugar — in fact, all manner of curious and strange little compotes and 
rarities that one would never see anywhere else under the sun, and memory 
of many of which has quite died from among us. 



Different Kitchens, 



Any housekeeper who knows how unpleasant it is always to be obliged to 
set the same round and routine before her guests, would be thankful for any 
thing that enlivens it, that varies it with a new sensation ; and it has often 
struck us that it would be a good plan if our country tourists made friends 
now and then with some of the simple families of the old farm-houses, and 
learned where the arcana of their kitchen secrets differ from their own. We 
all know how good it seems to come home to our own table and the manner 
of cooking to which we have been accustomed, even after the most luxurious 
of hotel tables ; and we all know how useful it is, when the appetite is poor, 
once in a while to spend a day or two away from home, and taste the customs 
of other kitchens and dining tables. Some little quaint thing that nobody 
ever heard of, or at any rate ever tasted, is a treasure to the tired brain of 
the provider, and even if it is not a complete success, it has changed the cur- 
rent of monotonous dishes ; and, as in other things, it is sometimes better to 
have failed than not to have tried at all. Meantime, there is some reason 
for the self-satisfaction of noted cooks, even if not quite to the extent of the 
one who considered the inventor of a new sauce as the equal of a great gen- 
eral ; for the one who puts together a new dish is certainly, to a larger degree 
than it would seem, in < ..livening, in gratifying, in pleasing, a family bene- 
factor. 

And it is, indeed, still more becoming to look about us and do the best 
we can with all the material at hand, since there has been such a change in 
relation to income and outlay in the increase of prices of all the commodities 
of life ; a change that has made it difficult for the master of the house not to 
do the small and pitiful thing, and has caused many a house-mother to groan 
in spirit seeing the quarterly bills mounting, and not knowing where the 
money is to come from to meet them. And yet all the time — all the spring 
and summer time at least — there is suitable and delicious provision at hand, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. A17 

waiting to be taken, asking to be eaten, receiving nothing but contumely, yet 
capable of making a third dish at every meal for absolutely no price but its 
seasoning — a bit of butter, a pinch of salt and pepper. 



Undreamed of Dishes. 



Some of these pleasant esculents are things dreamed of in the philosophy 
of very few of us. For the first of them — friends in need, as they will prove 
to those who adopt them — who would think of turning to the nettle, that hate- 
ful plant whose stings are a torture, and of which we make all effort to rid our 
land ? This nettle is a plant of such a pungent and astringent nature that its 
juice, applied on lint, will stop the flow of blood from the nostrils and from 
any slight wound ; there is a property in its seeds powerful enough to fight 
successfully against the dreadful goitre; and it is acrid enough, too, to give 
flexibility to a bit of steel that has been dipped in it. With such properties 
it is hard to imagine it an edible, and almost impossible to think of it as a 
choice edible. Yet, boiled and drained and chopped and served hot with 
butter and pepper on toast, it is an excellent substitute for spinach, and is 
preferred by many. If this seems strange to any of my readers unaccustomed 
to such aid in their bill of fare, they will perhaps think it stranger still that 
quite as palatable a dish is to be had from burdocks prepared in the same 
manner. A dish that is very agreeable, also, is made from certain of the very 
young ferns, a peculiar variety, boiled not quite a half hour and served with 
drawn butter or on buttered toast. Nobody, to look at the little downy, 
curled-up things, would ever dream of dining on them ; but they are really 
medicinal, in addition to their other qualities, being a good tonic, and having 
some of the same properties that the dandelion has in relation to biliousness, 
and they are of some service to dyspeptics. They must be plucked very 
young, when still woolly and curled up; blanching improves them; they 
should be boiled a little over an hour, with some salt in the water, and will 
be found excellent as a change of diet in the early season to which they be- 
long. We shall hardly be accused of helping to hurt the beauty of the nat- 
ural world by assisting in destroying the kingdom of ferns in thus advising 
their use — loveliest of all shapes, as they are, which nature imitates in every 
crystal and on every pane — because the fern is so prolific that it would take 
the aeons it required to bring the world out of that primeval condition when 
all growth was more or less ferny in order really to put an end to the pretty 
things. 

Besides these uncouth vegetables which may be impressed into our serv- 



4 i<* STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

ice, there are several excellent ''greens" not in common use, though growing 
everywhere. Among them is the much-despised purslane, the bane of gar- 
dens, the object of the farmer's loathing, and which the author of A Summer 
in My Garden has loaded with witty obloquy. Nothing sweeter nor more 
succulent and nourishing is known in the way of "greens," and those of our 
readers who see its pulpy sprays spreading from spot to spot in their gardens 
are advised by us to turn it to account and save many a half dollar at the 
green-grocer's. Five minutes' work will gather sufficient for a large family. 



The Mushroom, 



But perhaps nothing is quite so generally neglected as the generous and 
multitudinous mushroom. 

It is true that very few people feel well enough acquainted with it to dare 
pick it, and there are as many various opinions concerning its distinguishing 
marks as there are mushrooms — these picking anything for mushrooms that 
grows with nothing between itself and the sky, those contending that the best 
mushrooms are grown in the darkness of cellars, some of the growth that we 
knock over in our pastures for toad-stools being the favorite mushrooms in 
the foreign market, for instance, and those that the English esteem as the best 
being considered poisonous by the Italians, and making the burden of one of 
their bitterest imprecations. It is worth the reader's while to educate herself 
in the knowledge of the varieties of this appetizing fungus, for, rich as a veni- 
son steak when broiled and buttered, with pepper and salt, stewed it gives a 
strong and juicy gravy, and minced it imparts a fine and rare flavor to any 
dish with which it is mingled, so that, as may be easily seen, it is no mean 
accession to the store-room ; and as it can be dried and strung, it is one of the 
things that can be relied upon for the round year. Another article that is not 
often thought of among ourselves for its capabilities as food, however in its 
ultimate results of pumpkin-pie it may be valued, is the pumpkin blossom; 
though if one should see a market scene in some Mexican mountain town, 
with heaps of the great golden flowers all tumbled together and trembling 
with dew, one would understand that its capabilities were appreciated else- 
where. These blossoms, torn apart and tossed in a napkin to absorb the dew, 
and dressed like lettuce, make as tender and crisp a salad as an epicure — and 
a Spanish epicure at that — could desire. 

These are but a few instances of the use of the things chat are usually 
considered worthless, but which are lying all about us, and the moment that 
we observe them remind us of the beggar with whom St. Martin divided his 
cloak, and show that the humblest object is not to be despised- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 4 t 9 

The Story of Sylvia Dexter. 

The mother of Sylvia Dexter was a woman who never would have 
dreamed of any of these out-of-the-way dishes, and would have scorned to 
use them had she known of them. But Sylvia, herself, would, I think, have 
discovered them, every one 

"Yes," said Mr. Dexter, "honest poverty is nothing to be ashamed of." 

"Nothing to be proud of, either," said his son John. 

"And very disagreeable, anyway," said Sylvia, his pretty daughter 

"Well, I don't know why we need to talk about it. It's something of 
which we have no experience," said his wife, "honest, or otherwise." 

"Yes," said Mr. Dexter again — looking round at the breakfast room, 
whose walls were lined with Sylvia's vines and flowering plants that made it 
a bower of greenery, at his shining table, and the pretty, petulant woman with 
her pink ribbons at its head — "we have every comfort, and some luxury" 

"Papa means mamma for the luxury." 

"No; he means her for the comfort," said John, who was her special care. 

"Thanks, thanks," said mamma, bridling a little. "Comfort is quite 
lative. " 

"A very dear relative, sometimes," said John. 

"John," cried Sylvia; "you really must go into politics!" 

"Heaven forbid!" said his father. 

"He has such a capacity for pretty speeches he would be invaluable in 
diplomacy," urged Sylvia. 

"It is all he has a capacity for," his father thought. But he did not say 
so. "No, no," he said; "the less politics the better. His desk in the book- 
store is the place for John." 

"I should be well enough content with that if I owned the shop," said 
John. "But this spending the best of your days for others isn't what it 
might be." 

"It is a great deal better than running into debt for your beginning," 
said his father, as he left them. 

"Yes," said Sylvia; "save your salary and wait till I can help you." 

"You!" was the contemptuous reply. 

"I do think," sa i 'd Mrs. Dexter, "that a little dose of poverty wouldn't be 
amiss for Sylvia. She always feels such immense capabilities that it might 
bring her ' 1 

"To a realizing sense of her inefficiency," said Sylvia. "Well, mamma," 
she added presently, sipping her coffee — John having gone upstairs again to 
change his tie — "you speak as if that would give you pleasure.' 



4 <o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

"No, l don't; not at all. But you are always opposing John" 

"Why, mamma!" 

"Yes, you are. The moment John comes anywhere near proposing to 
your father to give him the money to buy out the stock of that place, you 
come in with your influence against it." 

"My influence, mamma! As if there were such a thing!" 

"Well, there is! You are so exactly like your father that he hears all you 
say. And he feels you behind him and laughs the whole thing off. Saving 
his salary, indeed! He might as well think of buying the crown jewels with 
his salary ! A salary is a dreadful thing ; it binds you down in chains. Yes ; 
there is no doubt about it, a salary is a dreadful thing." 

"But, mamma, do you think it is right, when papa has you and the little 
children on his hands — I don't speak of myself, because I suppose I can see to 
myself." 

"There it is again! Your immeasurable conceit of yourself." 

"But, mamma, there are quantities of young girls who do taKe care of 
themselves/ ' 

"Their name is not Sylvia Dexter, then." 

"Well, if I can't see to myself, it seems to me there is all the more reason 
for papa's not crippling himself by giving his money to John and risking 
everything." 

"There is no risk about it. You are a selfish and unnatural girl, Sylvia! 
You would let your poor brother toil and moil all his life, rather than make a 
little sacrifice yourself. And he has always been so good, so kind ; he was 
such a beautiful child — I remember when his curls were cut off that Mrs. 
Dares said' 1 

"Mamma, dear, you sent Julia on an errand, and said you would make 
John's lunch" 

"Sylvia! And it's almost train time! Why didn't you see to it? So 
full of the good of the family theoretically — and poor John all day in town 
with nothing to eat" 

"And not a restaurant handy," said Sylvia. "Well, I have seen to it. 
And there's an egg-sandwich, and a breast of duck, and some celery, and 
some salt, and a buttered muffin, and a little tart, and a doughnut, and a flask 
of coffee. John has a better luncheon than we shall have. He has it every 
day.' 

"I should think you grudged it to your brother!" 

"No, indeed ! John likes good things, and I like to put them up for him ; 
so we are even. John doesn't think so badly of me as you do, mamma." 

"I don't know what you mean, Sylvia. I never said I thought badly of 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 421 

you. You annoy me with your jealousy of John — poor, dear John ; he was 
meant for a prince — and you uphold your father in his severity." 

"Here, John — excuse me, mamma — here, John! " cried Sylvia, hurrying 
to the door as he went by. "Don't forget your luncheon." 

"Oh, hang the luncheon!" cried John, as he took the parcel. 'My 
father's economies will be the ruin of this family yet. If there's any one 
thing that has a cheap and detestable look, it's this pulling a luncheon out of 
your desk instead of going out like a man with any independence." 

"I'm sure you needn't take it, John, if you don't wish," remonstrated 
his mother. 

'Yes, take it, John," interpolated Sylvia. "A penny saved is a penny 
earned. It means more than half a dollar toward your capital. " 

"Come, now, that's interesting! Work it out for me while I'm gone, and 
see if I will have enough at that rate to put out at interest before I die. " 

"There," said Sylvia to herself, "I shall say no more about it. If papa 
chooses to take the risk — poor papa! Well, it's fortunate that Aunt Jeannette 
has invited me to visit her just now." And she put on her jacket to go and 
call upon the neighbor whose cow pastured in her lot, and see if it would not 
be as convenient to pa}^ the rent now as later, so that she need not ask her 
father to open his purse for her. And she came back with so bright a face 
that her mother declared she thought that cow-right was worth more to 
Sylvia than the whole place to them. 

"Perhaps it is," said Sylvia; "for it's mine, mamma. And it isn't going 
to be absorbed and lost in John's business, if the rest of the place is." 

For the little three-acre lot was Sylvia's. She had bought it and paid for 
it from her small savings, together with the two hundred dollars her grand- 
mother had left her, when there was a rumor of its purchase for some unpleas- 
ant purpose, it being just at the foot of the garden. Her mother had never 
given her any peace concerning it, so to say. She ought to have lent the 
money to John, was the tenor of 'Mrs. Dexter's frequent remark; and doubt- 
less she would have done so but for Harley Melton's influence, and for her 
part she wished Sylvia had never set eyes on Harley, undesirable and unsuit- 
able as he was! But Sylvia, for all that, had been a proud and happy land- 
holder and taxpayer ever since, and had enjoyed the sight of the neighbor's 
cow under the great trees, and drinking from the little brook formed by the 
spring that bubbled there as cold as if it had come all the way from Spitz- 
bergen ; and she had enjoyed quite as much the ten dollars a summer that the 
neighbor paid her. 

She had had another pleasure in it, too ; for often had she and Harley 
Melton laid out those three acres in their strolls across them ; and here should 



422 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



be the house, and here 
orchard ; and it would be 
and if Harley did not ^ 




LOOK AT THE JEWELS. OH, WHAT A GLITTER ! 



the little lawn, and here the 
so pleasant, being near papa; 
think it would be so 
pleasant being near 
mamma, he 
kept the 
thought to 
himself. Syl- 
via, with her 
great blue 
eyes, her 
lovely fair- 
n e s s , her 
sweet and 
sp arkling 
brown haired 
beauty, was 
so precious, 
that if the 
mother who 
bore her was 
not perfect, 
too, he was 
fv ; not sure that 

- £ the fault was 

¥ ' not in himself. He 

iy f ' loved Sylvia be- 

yond any words, 
the bright and busy 
> little creature, alive 

to the tips of her 
hair with interest in all 
things and all people, feel- 
ing all things alive as well 
to her, the bird on the bough, 
the blossom there, too, the 
child playing beneath it. 
They had no idea of marry- 



ing, except far in the indefinite future; they had nothing to marry on; it 
was enough to love each other now ; by-and-by they would build the little 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 423 

house, perhaps, in the piece of pasture. They used to wander over the bit 
of land as if it were an estate, with a joy of possession ; and where the spring 
bubbled out of the ledge that cropped up beneath the group of great trees, 
they would sit and watch the water as if every bubble were a miracle. 

"Just look down in it, Harley — how clear! Look at the jewels on the 
bottom ; they are rubies, sapphires, emeralds, opals, topazes, beryls — oh, what 
a glitter! What color, what splendor! It seems as if I could put down my 
arm and scoop up a handful of the gorgeous things." 

"The pebbles down there? It is the wonderful clearness of the water that 
makes them seem so near; and I suppose it is the vertical sunbeam that 
makes them seem so beautiful. They are really a dozen feet beyond your 
reach," said the young chemist. 

"They can't be, Harley!" 

"Yes, I sounded the spring last week; it is eighteen feet deep; and I 
don't dare to say how many gallons it pours out a minute that all go to waste 
through the Telassee River." 

"To think that our brook makes part of a big river!" 

"And I analyzed it, too. The river that went out of Eden could not be 
purer. One drinking this might think he was drinking of the water of life." 

"Well, it will be Eden when we have our little house up there on the 
knoll. What a beautiful earth it is, Harley, when such freshness and purity 
pour our of its dark places ! What a dear earth, to let us call this little piece 
of her ours!" 

"I really should think," said Mrs. Dexter when Sylvia came in, "that that 
spring was full of diamonds by the way you and Harley Melton hang over it. " 

"It is, mamma — it is!" and Sylvia danced away with no idea of the truth 
in her words. 

It was lonesome at Aunt Jeannette's, in the big town twenty miles away. 
Her father and John and Harley came in every day to their business, and for 
five minutes she saw Harley, who made occasion to go by the gate. Her 
father and John found time for few visits. Her first letter from her mother 
informed her that she would be glad to hear that her father had at last sold 
his bonds and given John the proceeds to buy out the business where he had 
slaved so long as a clerk. Sylvia knew, however, under what unbearable 
pressure her poor father had been brought to yield ; and her indignation and 
pity for him made her feel at first as if she never wanted to go into the house 
again. Succeeding letters were very jubilant and happy ; it gave his mother 
so much pleasure to see John taking his place as became him, a man among 
men. She thought the business must be flourishing, for John had a little 
naphtha launch on the river, in which he went to town now, instead of travel- 



424 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

ing with all the dust and jar of the railway. Of course, of course there had 
been opposition, the letter said, for his father was one of those men who never 
liked innovation; but probably he would soon be going into town on it him- 
self. He was always prognosticating evil; any one would think John was 
committing an unpardonable extravagance in having devised a healthier way 
of going to business than they had ever known before. Mr. Dexter did not 
approve of John's new horse, either; and yet any one could see that the horse 
was as gentle as a woolly lamb, and he ate apples and sugar from the chil- 
dren's hands, and when he traveled he simply flew. 

When Sylvia made an errand to her father's office, she found him as anx- 
ous as she had expected. But it would do no good for her to go home with 
him just now ; she would show her disapprobation of the state of affairs too 
plainly; and she couldn't if she would, for Aunt Jeannette was ill with ty- 
phoid fever, and, of course, it was out of the question to leave her. There 
was really a pestilence of typhoid in the town. All the drinking water was 
drawn from a river that passed large polluting towns and tanneries, and every 
day a new case appeared, till there was almost a panic in the place. 

Fortunately for Sylvia she was one of those creatures so full of vital 
strength and fire that fear was unknown to her ; and so well had she nursed 
Aunt Jeannette that, when she was a little rested, the hard-pressed physician 
begged her to help him on another case. And so it chanced that she went 
from one sick bed to another, and presently came to be offered large payments 
for her services; and in view of her apprehensions concerning John and her 
father's unsecured loan to him, it seemed best for her to continue both earn- 
ing money and carrying relief. Harley protested that she would wear herself 
out ; but she protested in return that she was well and young and strong, and 
liked it ; and that even if the duty had not been set so plainly before her in 
relation to the sick and her ability to help them, it would be a wanton waste 
for her to refuse to earn the money thus offered her. "Oh, Harley!" she cried; 
"I must do all I can for them. For when I think of the poor creatures dying 
for want of good water, murdered by bad water, and remember our spring in 
the pasture bubbling up fresh and pure every second, I feel like a criminal ; 
as if I kept health and strength all to my self ; as if I, and not the spring, were 
wasting what would be life to them." 

"Such a morbid feeling shows that you are tired and in no condition to 
be nursing the sick, " said Harley. But suddenly, as they went along together 
— foi he appointed to meet her almost every day now in the hour's walk al- 
lowed the nurse by custom — his face flushed and flashed with a sudden thought 
like the passing of a sunbeam. "Will you give me permission to do what I 
please, to take all I want of the spring water, and in the way I think best?" 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



425 




FROM ONE SICK BED TO ANOTHER. 



"Theidea!" 
cried Sylvia. 
"Permission, in- 
deed! Isn't what 
is mine yours? ' 
And they passed 
to more purely 
personal matters. 
"I don't know if you are aware," wrote her mother, some weeks after- 
ward, " that Harley Melton is meddling with the spring in your piece of pas- 
ture, as you call it, meddling in my opinion most unwarrantably. He has 
had men there scooping it out and curbing it ; and he has rigged an unsightly 
derrick there, and men are filling great glass demijohns by the wagonful. And 
at this rate there'll be no spring there at all presently. I suppose it is to save 
himself the trouble of distilling water for his prescriptions — that is so pure. 
I'm sure if he has money enough to hire men and rig derricks and all that, 
and cares as much as he pretends about you, he had better lend it to John, 
who can't sleep nights for worrying about his notes." 

Sylvia was too busy with her sick and dying people to wonder much 
about the burden of her mother's letter. She knew that whatever Harley 
did was likely to be right. She could not spare the time to go and 
see her father again; she could not get the time; but she felt oppressed 
with fear for him, and she laughed a little bitterly at herself to think 
she had supposed she could help him with her earnings, when a whole year 
of them would not amount to a thousand dollars. But, at any rate, she 



426 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

was glad that she was lifting any portion of expense from him, be it ever so 
small. 

It was some weeks afterward that when she went out for her morning 
walk in a new direction, and saw great posters on all the fences and telegraph 
poles, "Drink water from the Sylvan Spring and prevent typhoid," she under- 
stood with a double thrill of joy — joy for themselves, and joy for the sick — what 
Harley was doing. And when she met him driving in with a load of the glass 
carboys filled with Sylvan Spring water, which he left from house to house, be- 
fore going to his headquarters for fresh orders, she felt as if he were really an 
angel of the Lord in mortal guise. And he held out his hand for her to mount 
to his side, and she rode back into town with him, feeling as a devotee might 
do who carried holy water to the perishing and penitent. 

Sylvia had gone back to her Aunt Jeannette's for a short rest after the 
hard and cruel winter, when, one bright May day, her father came to see her. 
John had failed ; and all that Mr. Dexter had saved and spared in the long 
years had gone into the gulf with the money of the other creditors. There 
were no assets to speak of — a few notes, the remnants of an ill-chosen stock, 
the horse that had gone lame, the disabled naphtha launch. Slyvia felt as 
though her heart would break when she saw her father's despondency. ' ' I don't 
blame your poor mother," he said. "Love is a good fault. It was her love 
for John, and her belief in me. She thought I was equal to any trouble that 
might come, superior to it; but even I supposed John had some capacity. It's 
hard, my child, to begin life over again at sixty." 

"I don't think you will have to do that, Mr. Dexter," said Harley who, com- 
ing in just then, had heard the last words. "I am just making a return to 
my chief; and I am sure it will be a joy to Sylvia to replace a good portion of 
your losses by indorsing this check to you." 

"Harley!" 

"I have deducted all the expenses and my own commission," said Harley. 
"You will see by the schedules that we supply in this town and others along 
the route and on the further side — for the typhoid scare is widespread now — 
more than a thousand families with the Sylvan Spring water, at fifty cents a 
week. Of course the expenses are heavy; but then the net profit is heavy, too. 
It gives Sylvia and me enough to build our house in another spot at some dis- 
tance from the water-works, a pasture of mine. And if you, Mr. Dexter, will 
take the management of the business in town — I think it need not interfere 
with your present arrangements ; and John will oversee the teams — that is 
quite within his power; I can attend to the spring-house until the time, that 
is, when the towns take the works off our hands and pay us fifty or a hundred 
thousand for our plant, with permanent positions in the business." 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 427 

" There is no more honest poverty in ours, papa," cried Sylvia. 

"Harley!" said Mr. Dexter; "you are my salvation." 

"Well, sir, you can reverse the thing and be mine by giving your daugh- 
ter a command to become my wife here and now!" 

"Without her mother?" 

'Well, papa," said Sylvia, blushing rosy-red, but feeling obliged to come 
to Harley's help, "Aunt Jeannette would do. And you know that mamma 
has a great — a great faculty for obstruction. I think she will be so relieved 
about John that she will forgive us. And we will make her a w r edding present 
of a paid-up mortgage of the house." 

"You are a nouvcau riche, Sylvia. Harley must not allow you to be too 
free with your money. " 

"Oh, it isn't ours; it is a trust the dear old Mother Earth gives us. We 
are to be happy out of it, and to make every one else happy. And, oh, what 
happiness it is to bring health to whole towns full of people! Don't you re- 
member I told you the spring was full of sapphires and rubies and emeralds, 
Harley? And real ones, you see, papa!" for Harley had slipped a ring on her 
finger some little time before. "Papa, you are quite another person already," 
she cried, pinning on her hat and going out to the minister's with them and 
her Aunt Jeannette 

"Oh, you dear, sweet, confiding old Mother Earth," Sylvia exclaimed, 
kneeling at her window that night, and looking out on the dark, slumbering, 
champaign country behind the town, "I love you so!" 

"I think," said Harley, "you had better be saying how you love me!" 

"That goes without saying," she replied, leaning back her head on his 
arm. "But this dear earth — she makes us so happy while she rolls with us 
about the sun that it seems to me now only a happiness to think of the 
time when we shall be a part of her — just brown dust together in her 
bosom!" 

"Oh, but a long way off!" he cried, folding her still more closely in his 
arms. 

It was at about the same hour that Mrs. Dexter, having inspected the re- 
leased mortgage and the gratifying check, had coquettishly picked out the pink 
ribbons of her cap and was remarking to her husband : 

"Well, it was the most thoughtful thing Sylvia ever did — to save me the 
fuss of a wedding. That piece of pasture! Is John to have a salary — or a 
commission ? A salary is so comfortable. You always know where you are 
with a salary. It has to be paid. Oh, yes, a salary is the best thing; I have 
always said so. Harley Melton is turning out better than I thought. I never 
said there was any harm in him ; only that he was so inefficient. Still, with 



428 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



the money coming in, Sylvia could have done better. She could have married 
almost any one. It is vexatious, say what you will, to have an outsider like 
Harley directing family affairs. It is just the thing for John himself to do; 
and it is my private opinion that John suggested the whole business in the 
first place. He always said that water was pure. John is so full of 
ideas!" 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 429 



CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. 



Work. 

Laborare est orare. 

Books or work or healthful play. 

—Dr. Watts. 

And blessed are the horny hands of toil. 

— J. R. Lowell. 

Men, my brothers, men, the workers, always reaping something new. 

— Temiyson. 
For men must work and women must weep 
And there's little to earn and many to keep. 

— Charles Kings ley. 

In the morning when thou art sluggish at rousing thee let this thought be present : " I am 
rising to a man's work." — Marcus Aurelius. 

If all the year were playing holidays 
To sport would be as tedious as to work. 

— Shakespeare. 

Every man is the son of his own works. 

— Cervantes. 
By the work one knows the workman. 

— La Fontaine. 
Man's work is from sun to sun, 
Woman's work is never done. 

— Old Distich. 

As necessary a stepping stone to happiness as there is in the whole world 
is to be found in work — enough work, and not too much. When we murmur 
about our work, we seldom reflect how much more pitiful would be the condi- 
tion of the most laborious among us if we were suddenly to be deprived of it. 
We often look upon it as a burden, when it is in reality a blessing in disguise. 
We picture to ourselves how much happier we should be without it, and envy 
those who are born to a heritage of idleness, when we should be, in truth, the 
most wretched beings alive could we exchange places with them for a day. 
What an angel of mercy has it proved to many! What a solace for vacant 
hours! What a panacea for troubles, sentimental or otherwise! Did not John 
Bunyan bless it, think you, in Bedford jail, where he beguiled the time with 



43 o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

toiling over his Pilgrim's Progress? Has it not ministered to many a 
mind diseased, plucked from the heart many a rooted sorrow? Is it not the 
only sure antidote to ennui ? a remedy against a host of ills to which flesh and 
spirit are heir? Has it not rendered us oblivious to injuries and neglect? 

That the money value of work is not its ultimate charm is well attested 
by those who, having been hard workers for the greater portion of their lives, 
retire from business, expecting to enjoy themselves and their hard-earned 
wealth, but finding the weeks and months heavy upon their hands, finally re- 
sume their old habits of industry, having made the important discovery that 
they had been enjoying themselves all their days; that their true contentment 
was like the statue hidden in the marble block — something to be wrought out 
by toil; that work was the only talisman against low spirits and hypochon- 
dria. We rarely, if ever, hear busy people complaining of megrims; they do 
not often swell the number of suicides. They have little time to spare for 
their neighbors' affairs, since the sincere worker must pin his mind to his 
work, if he would accomplish anything worth dignifying with the name, and 
not some slop-shop makeshift. We sometimes feel that if we could only 
choose our work or exchange with another we should be better pleased and 
more successful; then we should become earnest in its pursuit; then should 
we cease to slight and slander it ; then would our efforts be as spontaneous as 
the bird's song. But is it not wiser for us to do honestly that which falls in our 
way, if it be only to darn stockings or to scour knives, without waiting for any- 
thing more worthy of our strength or talents? Is it not a reproach to Him 
Who assigns it to suppose it a mistake and something beneath our abilities, as 
well as a vanity in us, to imagine ourselves capable of more ambitious tasks? 
And are we not assured that 

"Who sweeps a room as by God's laws, 
Makes that and the action fine? " 



Mrs. Browning's Word. 



Perhaps Mrs. Browning's noble sonnet says in small compass the best 
there is to say of this: 

"What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil; 

Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines 

For all the heat o' the day, till it declines, 
And Death's wild curfew shall from work assoil. 
God did anoint thee with His odorous oil 

To wrestle, not to reign, till He assigns 

All thy tears over, like pure crystallines 



STEPPING STONEvS TO HAPPINESS. 431 

For younger fellow-workers of the soil 

To wear for amulets. So others shall 

Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand, 
From thy heart, and thy hand, and thy brave cheer, 

And God's grace fructify through -thee to all. 

The least flower with a brimming cup may stand 
And share its dewdrop with another near." 



The Value of Work to Character. 

In another consideration, one perhaps more selfish, there are few things 
of so much value to the character as work and the habit of work. This, the 
pleasure-lover, the idler, the very young and thoughtless may be inclined to 
doubt, but advancing years will teach them the truth of the statement. I re- 
member having heard Emma Stebbins, the sculptress, and the friend of Char- 
lotte Cushman — and both of these illustrious women had been ardent workers 
— once say to a young person who complained that she hated work, and would 
like to loll a year or two on rose leaves: "Ah, my dear, I hope the time will 
never come to you when you will be thankful for work!" 

It may be a vastly more agreeable thing for a season to lounge in the 
sunshine, to sit half buried in luxurious ease, and read a novel that takes us 
out of our humdrum existence and into a life inviting as Elysian fields, to fold 
our hands, doing nothing but waiting for something to turn up; but all that 
sort of thing, pursued as a profession, grows infinitely more tiresome than 
the most tiring work. For there is occasionally an immense difference in the 
significance of the two words, tiresome and tiring, the one often implying a 
fatigue of the spirit which dissipates all its forces, and the other a wholesome 
fatigue of the body, to be refreshed by rest or sleep; no rest or sleep refreshes 
us when a thing is simply tiresome, for the tiresomeness is monotonous, un- 
derlying and always there. In fact, if we do not want pleasure and ease to fall 
on us so that we would at last find ourselves glad to dig or scrub for a change 
from the soft condition, we shall have to learn to take that pleasure and ease 
only as the reward of labor, as a relaxation really earned by effort, a some- 
thing that has become ours by personal right; and we shall discover it to be 
then as much more delicious in its sweetness as the honey of the bee, with its 
wild-flower tang and flavor, is more delicious than the baker's treacle with its 
dull insipidity. 

Noi is work, of whatever sort it may be, merely desirable in this way of 
exercise and sport to the healthy muscle and healthy brain maintaining sound 
condition or creating it; but it is a blessing even if in disguise by means of 
its taking us for a while as completely out ol ourselves as the most enthralling 



432 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

romance could; for as we have seen we can seldom do our work without think- 
ing of that work; that which can be done without thinking seems to have 
little of the sacredness of work about it and to be really only a hybrid between 
work and play; and if we are thinking of the work then certainly we are not 
thinking of the other matters that environ us or overwhelm us and by their 
monotony would furrow ridges in the brain were that possible. We come 
back to ourselves with the interest of those that have been away from home 
and we are better able to meet our circumstances by the new view we get of 
them through our absence and return. If we are of that great number whom 
sorrow has marked for its own, who are surrounded by an atmosphere of 
teasing trouble, or who have met with some great calamity, then how great a 
resource shall we find this absorbing work which we once so scorned! For 
the time, at least, the stinging throng of annoyances is escaped, the pressure of 
the great calamity is lifted ; we find ourselves with a new anxiety, that of 
doing our work well, of expressing our thought perfectly, of achieving suc- 
cess in the direction we have aimed. Only those who have suffered may per- 
haps know the full extent of the blessing that work is when it comes to absorb 
them from their grief ; yet they who are loaded with all the pleasures which the 
world has to give will usually find that it has one thing more to give in the 
enkindling and revivifying of work pursued in earnest. 



All Creation Works. 

But even if work comes not as a blessing per se, and has to be considered 
as part of the primal curse in which man was bidden to earn his bread in the 
sweat of his brow, and which the minority of mankind seem to think did not 
include themselves, what right has any created thing to wish to evade it? Is 
there such a thing known as absolute rest among all the powers and agencies 
of the cosmic universe, the very names of power and agency implying action ? 
Are not the four elements constant at their never-ceasing, never-resting, 
always interchanging labor? Does one drop of water pause in the roll of the 
ocean, one tongue of flame hang suspended in the fire, one cloud stay motion- 
less in the wide heavens, one atom of the brown earth cease to disintegrate, 
to moulder, to crumble and change for its nevv state? Is not the seed ever 
germinating, the flower ever blooming, the fruit ever ripening, the wind ever 
blowing, vapor rising, sunshine falling, rivers running? Do the planets rest 
in their courses, the earth in its revolution, the tides in their great swing- 
ing ? All the atoms and impulsions of nature are constantly rendering their 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 433 

tithe of service ; and why, then, should any one of us, as much an atom of 
nature as stock or stone is, and moved by nature's quickening as much as tide 
or sap — why should we halt at our work and bemoan our fate that we have 
our share of work to do? Even while we bemoan ourselves the work of the 
universe goes on unceasingly in our own bodies and the changes that bring 
on old age daily within us and about us. There is something marvelously 
strange in view of the industry of all the natural forces that the human race, 
or any portion of it, should be the only thing to rebel at the necessity of labor, 
in some degree at least. 

But apart from all fancies of the kind it is a fact that there has never been 
anything of moment in the world accomplished without work. What an im- 
mensity of it must have been done to complete those conquests over the raw 
material of the earth in the ancient desert ruins, temples and aqueducts in the 
modern tunneling of mountains and stretching of railroads across continents! 
"The money that you pay us for our labor we send home," said the Chinese 
to some agitator against them, "but the work remains for you." And so the 
act of work remains in its effect upon the character of the worker. He is up 
and doing when others sleep, and not only winning his measure of success 
thereby, but keeping himself from rusting out, polishing every faculty, 
stretching every nerve, bright and alert for the next thing, whatever it be, 
the business of this world or that of the other — the other upon which he may 
some morning wake surprised — surprised to find work waiting for him in the 
new horizons, and himself all the better fitted for it that he did no shirking 
here. 

It often seems a regrettable matter of concern when we observe the man- 
ner in which a large number of subordinates — we can hardly call them 
workers since they would avoid any reason for being called so — complain of 
the necessity that compels them to their daily tasks. One thing of their fu- 
ture is certain : no individual of those complaining is a person who will ever, 
as the vernacular goes, "amount to anything." For look at their chiefs and 
employers; there is no clerk in any leading business of the country who works 
as indefatigably as the head of his house does, so long as he remains in the 
business ; up betimes in the morning it may be while the clerk is still stretch- 
ing and yawning and hesitating on his pillow ; and the last perhaps to leave 
the counting-room at night. It is quite possible that in such an employer's 
case there is too much business done out of the superabundance of activity ; 
but it is done, the profit and reward of it is reaped ; and while he bemoans 
himself that he must work, the subordinate will never be reaping any other 
profit or reward than his meagre salary, which he evidently works hard to get 
without work. 



434 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Conscience in the Work. 

Whatever the work is, it is always to be done with a conscience. In the 
struggle not only for superiority, but for existence, and the making of exist- 
ence comfortable if not also beautiful, with which this country and this age 
are only too well acquainted, it is said that workers have no time to take con- 
science into counsel, and to do their stent as if doing it to the stern judgment 
of the fullest light that might ever fall upon it. 

Yet if all workers, and in that sense all individuals, realized the great 
doctrine of consequences, and the manner in which every circumstance is in- 
terwoven with every other circumstance that has gone before or is to come 
after, conscience would never be thrust out of sight, but would be the chosen 
friend, and given the place of honor at one's right hand. 

The careless, happy spinner slights her thread ; the rope spun with that 
thread breaks, and the man it held falls down the shaft ; then a family is left 
fatherless and destitute children grow up to crime and shame; theft, murder 
and the gallows hang on those strands of thread, sighs, tears and agony, deso- 
lated affection, betrayed love, crime multiplying crime with the rapid growth 
of a fungus, a country its prey. If conscience had sat by that spinner, that 
contingent amount of harm, at least, with its far-widening and long-reaching 
circles, would never have been done the world. For there is no action that 
does not entail its consequences, not on the actor alone, but on all in contact 
with the actor, with the air one might declare that the lifting of the arm to do 
the deed disturbs, and all whom that air touches. 



Work Here and Abroad. 

We often hear complaints that this and that sort of work is not done so 
well here as in England, or France, or Switzerland; and allowing it to be 
true, one marvels why liberty and all the civilizing influences that surround 
the worker in this country should have the effect of making his work poor and 
slovenly and unfaithful. Yet, if the statement is really true it is doubtless 
because in the older lands the workman has no expectation of ever rising 
above his work, and his only hope is in its perfection ; while here, on the con- 
trary, every worker knows certain of his possibilities, and looks at the future 
through them and not through his handiwork, as he should do; he does his 
handiwork only in the interim before he carries out his possibilities 

Perhaps the complainants have done their own work well in complaining; 
or perhaps they have been too hasty in demanding more than one century and 
a quarter of national life has had time to effect, and we may be just entering 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 435 

on the ripened fruit of those years of liberty. Nothing speaks better for our 
later conscientious endeavor than the appearance of much work at the various 
exhibitions, the fact that to-day many of our wares find more demand and 
better market than the foreign, and than so little a thing, as at first glance it 
may seem, as the discovery by a woman of the secret of the lovely Limoges 
ware, so that its foreign maker mistook her work for that of his own people. 



Love of Art Equaling Conscience. 

Sometimes, indeed, the European worker's love of art answers for con- 
science. Doubtless that old Demetrius of Ephesus who made silver shrines 
for Diana did his work faultlessly. But it was another sort of conscience that 
animated Yoshiaki, the sword-maker of Osaka, in Japan. "His idea was that 
having been bred up to a calling which trades in life and death, he was bound, 
so far as in him lay, to atone for this by seeking to alleviate the suffering 
which is in the world ; and he carried out this principle to the extent of im- 
poverishing himself. No neighbor ever appealed to him in vain for help in 
tending the sick or in burying the dead. No beggar or leper was ever turned 
from his door without receiving some mark of his bounty. Nor was his 
scrupulous honesty less remarkable than his charity. Whilst other smiths 
were in the habit of receiving large sums by counterfeiting the marks of 
famous makers of antiquity, he never turned out a weapon which bore any 
other mark than his own. Withov+ knowing it Yoshiaki was a sound Chris- 
tian. " And there can be no doubt that this man did his work better, made 
his blades keener and lighter, because his conscience was so active that it 
caused him thus to atone for the making of swords at all. 

But it is not only the makers of swords, and of ropes, and of artistic ob- 
jects, that need their conscience in their work; the domestic worker needs it 
just as much, if not more. The child at her practicing, the girl who sets a 
stitch in her darning, the maid who trims the lamp for the night, the man 
who shovels the snow from the door, the mistress who directs the servants, 
and who ruins them as well as her housekeeping by neglecting to keep them 
up to the proper point in their duties — all these need conscience at their side 
as well as the weaver whose badly woven sail, splitting with the bellying 
wind, as the carpenter whose badly driven bolt, hurl a ship to her destruc- 
tion. These stand in danger of hurling more than a ship to destruction, one 
might imagine — of "ruining all the comfort, the peace, and happiness of a 
home, by the want of this conscience yoked with needle and brain, eyesight 
and will. 

For this very "conscience that makes cowards of us all," once admitted 



436 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

to our company makes us afraid to slight our work, makes us feel the conse- 
quences that come from badly baked bread, from poorly aired beds, from loose 
buttons, from strings not renewed in season, from unwhipped seams in our 
sewing, from stitches dropped in our knitting, from children unreproved at 
the moment of a fault, from servants allowed to commit the second time the 
error they made before, since nowhere has this useful conscience greater op- 
portunity for play than in the work of the housekeeper — work that begins with 
the first breath she draws beneath the roof of the home that she undertakes 
to care for, that ceases neither by day nor night till she draws the last breath, 
and is only made systematic, and thus as easy as the breath itself, by the aid 
of this bosom friend and counsellor. 



Those Who Are Down on Their Luck. 

But not only concerning his work will you hear the idle and the listless 
worker fret his soul, but of something that he calls his luck. He is one of 
those people who never are "in luck." These people feel that if they were 
not born under an unlucky star it was because a wandering comet, yet more 
baleful, was in the ascendant. They made at the beginning, they might 
suppose, some one of those infinitesimal errors which in the course of a life- 
long calculation widen out into the logarithmic figures. 

They came into the world behind time, they would tell you, and have 
always been in pursuit of it and never catching up. They were born just too 
late for a legacy, they die just too late for the life-insurance which happens to 
expire first. Their piece of bread is sure to fall and always on the buttered 
side; their dear gazelles are sure to die; if they think they can play comedy, 
a compelling fate thrusts them into tragedy; they would like to write poetry, 
but are obliged to make a living by plain prose; if they have a chance in an 
oil well, it runs nothing but mud and water; if they have a silver mine, it 
turns out a false lead ; if they dabble in stocks, it is only to burn their fingers ; 
all their bulls are beared, all their swans are geese, there are seven Fridays in 
every week of their lives, and all of them are black Fridays, so black that they 
are blue ! On the wedding journeys of these worthies nobody has a slipper 
to throw after them ; horseshoes never lie in their path ; let them get up 
never so early in the morning to catch their worm, an earlier bird has been 
before them. The blind beggar on the corner always sees them, when their 
pockets are empty and a charming girl is their companion, before he sees any- 
body else; the confidence man always selects them for victims; if they 
travel, they are the Jonahs of the journey; if they stay at home, it is to see 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 437 

the folly of not having gone abroad ; their brothers never learn to swim, and 
sail round the world in safety; they learn every trick of the water, to be 
drowned in their own bath-tub ; regardless of the economies, other people may 
put bacon in the engine fires and sit on the valve, and nothing happens; but 
these people will not only be blown up by the steam of their own tea-kettle, 
but will have to eat their greens without bacon. No contagious disease goes 
a-begging for the want of them to take it, and always at the most inauspicious 
season; their good crop and their neighbor's famine never come together; if 
they make a corner in cream, there is always a thunder-storm on hand to 
sour it ; in short, whatever they do, they will have reason to wish they had 
done the other thing; they are so invariably out of joint with the times and 
seasons of prosperity that if a fool's cap be thrown into the crowd where they 
are, theirs is the head it falls on, while they are led to declare that if they had 
been born hatters, other people would have been born without heads; and 
they are thankful for but one thing in the world, and that is that they were 
not born a pair of twins. 

It may have been to this strangely infelicitous class that those wretched 
women of the French Revolution belonged who, when one tyrant went down 
and before another came to the top, were taken from the prison to the guillo- 
tine by mere routine. For such a fate as that would seem something to be 
avoided neither by wit nor learning, and only to have come through a natural 
alienation from luck, an inherent hostility to happiness. But if we admit the 
existence of luck or of ill luck at all, certainly these and such as these are the 
only ones who can claim any striking disagreement with it. 

But the wretched individuals who pride themselves on being so invaria- 
bly unfortunate never attribute any of their misfortunes to their rashness or 
to their procrastination, to their indolence or to their meddlesomeness, to their 
pusillanimity or to their overplus of pluck, to their maladroitness or to the 
element omitted in their combinations ; they neither reproach others nor them- 
selves — it is always and merely their luck. Luck is the divinity that shapes 
their ends ; and if we will accept a new reading of the old passage, is the 
divinity that shapes their ends rough — hew them how they will ! " Just my 
luck," is the shibboleth they use on all occasions, till other people adopt their 
own view of themselves, and leave them out of their schemes and out of 
their parties, as persons with whom it is not best to attempt fine undertakings, 
till the unlucky ones again cry out against their treatment as a fresh mani- 
festation of the injustice of Providence, and against themselves as nothing but 
the fools of fortune. 

It has sometimes occurred to us that a possible reason of many of the 
woes of these poor creatures is that they are completely out of time and place, 



438 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

they do not belong to this generation or to this era ; they were unlucky at the 
outset, in that they reached this planet some thousands of years after all their 
kindred souls had passed away. They belonged to the times of the augurs; 
to the times when adventures were undertaken by the direction of the smoke 
of sacrifice or the position of the entrails of animals ; to the time when For- 
tune had her altars, and men invoked good luck with burnt-offerings, and 
poured libations to prevent its opposite ; to the epoch of superstition between 
those two great flights of birds, one of which directed Romulus to Rome and 
the other directed Columbus to America. They are still the devotees of small 
credulity, and certainly are foreign to the age and the latitudes of civilization. 
It is not, of course, impossible that, in all the complications of the innum- 
erable threads that hold the worlds in order, there should be some found run- 
ning at cross-purposes through unwise human intervention, that there should 
be born individuals the currents of whose lives may run counter to the great 
currents of the universe; but since there is a deep and everlasting law to con- 
trol the things of creation, and reconcile disturbances, and a wise disposer of 
events, such variations are, to say the least, unlikely; and it seems to us, 
after all, about time for a general declaration of disbelief in the existence of 
any such thing as ill luck. "It is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we 
are underlings," the great poet of humanity tells us, and reason confesses the 
truth of the statement. The person who is in earnest is never unlucky. 
This is a world of equations and equivalents, and every serious effort has its 
balancing power of success. 

Rest After Work. 

And when one has worked all one will or can, there comes usually the 
recompense of toil, and then comes a measure of rest. To those whose toil 
has brought them the means to do so there is no more delightful rest to 
be had than in a short season of travel and of making one's self acquainted 
with the world. It is singular that there seems to be no such rest to the 
wearied mind and nerves as that which travel brings, although it may some- 
times fatigue the body. 

The Rest of Travel. 

Perhaps it is on the same principle that a new attitude is often restful, 
bringing into use another set of muscles, and letting those that have been long 
exerted take a season of relaxation. For the mind that has fallen into a rou- 
tine, and worked too long in a rut, finds itself flaccid as a string that has been 
stretched too far. and it receives benefit from another sort of exertion and in 



44o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

a different direction. One would suppose that all the rapid changes and 
novelties met and the bodily fatigues undergone in travel would themselves 
be exhausting, and that, if one wanted mental rest, one could secure it better 
at home. But it is well known that precisely the opposite is true, and that 
most physicians who have nervous patients, or those threatened with derange- 
ment of nerves or brain, order travel, as they might order a narcotic or a 
stimulant, sure of its beneficial result. 

Certainly this is a delightful medicament; and how could one better har- 
monize the right and the delectable than in obeying such prescriptions, and 
taking up one's bed and walking, to the ends of the earth if need be, and not 
forgetting to reward the prescribing physician by seeing everything and en- 
joying the whole of it. One can stay at home and take nauseous doses, doubt- 
ful if one is to be better at the end than in the beginning ; but who would not 
rather take a dose of moonlight in Vienna, city of mirroring, a dose of the 
ruins of the Alhambra, with a run over to Tangier to heighten the flavor; 
who would not make an exertion to see that there was no error made in the 
compounding cf the prescription of a dahabeeyah on the Nile, and rest under 
the shadow of Phike; would not gladly swallow such a bolus as a summer on 
the ^gean Islands, in the Engadine, in the Trossachs, at the North Cape — 
and feel that the old saying of "See Rome and die" in such case is trans- 
formed into "See Rome and live" ? 



The Mind in Travel. 

But, besides rest and medicine to tired nerves, is there anything much 
more elevating and stimulating to the mental processes than well-conducted 
travel? Does it not enlarge the mind as well as the sympathies, and tend to 
give us a wider scope in every way, and more active intellectual energy than 
we had before? "To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be im- 
possible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible," says 
a great writer. "Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, what- 
ever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present', 
advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my 
friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved 
over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. 
The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain fervor upon 
the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the 
ruins of Iona." If this be true, it is no marvel that our wishes turn so 
ardently to that dark side of the earth unknown to us as the dark side of the 




ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 



(44l) 



442 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

moon, since for all that books of travel may tell us, no imagination, even' by 
their help, is vivid enough to paint the whole picture as man and nature may 
have made it. Whoever pictured to himself the unseen home of a friend as it 
really is, on this side of the street, with this furnishing, this atmosphere, this 
character? and how, then, should all the travelers' tales of all the travelers 
in existence give us in our mind that clear view which our actual eyes shall 
have strike them like a revelation as we look at the Parthenon, at York Min- 
ster, at Freiburg spire, at Mont Blanc rosy in the sunrise, at the Campagna in 
an autumn morning, at Rome, and all the ghosts of the Old World rising with 
it to salute us? Let them content themselves with books of travel who can do 
no better than sit at home and turn the pages; but those of us whose kindly 
doctor orders change will be only too glad to borrow of Puck's wizardry, 
made matter of fact through electricity, and put a girdle round the earth in 
forty minutes in the shape of telegraphic messages from Land's End to No 
Man's Land. And when we come back to humdrum life again, and all its 
duties, what wilder wizardry shall we make every time we shut our eyes, and 
the picture, the person, the scene, starts up vividly as a fire in the night, 
drawn clearly on the brain, an everlasting wealth in the memory. 

It is true that this kind of rest and change and medicament takes a great 
deal of money out of the country, and enriches foreign lands at our expense, 
and that the political economists strike and spare not a great deal of gratui- 
tous growling in relation to the subject. But does it really do no more than 
enrich other countries to the loss of this ? Does it really bring nothing back 
of as much value, to say the least, as the money it took out? Is there no 
wealth to a country in the experience of its citizens, in their education, their 
acquirements, their familiarity with the works of greatness of whatever sort? 
Are values only to be found in raw material, in so much wheat, so much gold, 
so much cotton ? To my thinking, what the traveler brings home, stamped 
with fresh impression, is coin for currency, capable of being of infinitely more 
use to the country than the trivial dollars and cents that he took out of it. 
He has seen the best that art has done, if not the best it will do ; he has seen 
the ruins of dead empires, and the workings of existing ones ; he has seen this 
one and that of the famous people of the earth ; he has learned, if he has wit, 
a part of the lessons that the Old World has to teach the New, and that are 
seldom learned except by actual contact. He brings home to a new land, 
with vast untrodden and untraveled tracts of country, almost without monu- 
ments, and with art, however high in individual achievement, but little be- 
yond its infancy so far as the general public is concerned, tradition, knowledge, 
culture, and as good as all the rest, acquaintance with what it should avoid in 
its newness, since its two hundred and fifty years are but a babyhood beside 



444 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

the years of the ancient kingdoms of the earth. Every traveler who comes 
home to us, still regarding the institutions of his own country as sacred 
things, and not denationalized by admiration of the admirable things of other 
lands, nor dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets, still remembering 
that of all good things liberty is the best thing, can only contribute to our 
real wealth by adding to us, as a people, appreciation of those advantages that 
come with later growth, each individual doing his share toward the leavening 
of the lump. 

The Reader in Travel. 

It is the reader to whom this travel is of the most account. How many 
are there who go to Scotland, for instance, for no other purpose than to follow 
out the fancies of Walter Scott's immortal music, who tramp over the High- 
lands to the memory of Rob Roy, see the purple Trossachs for the sake of 
Roderick Dhu, for whom Flodden Field would be barren of interest had 
"Marmion" never been written, and who would never see Dryburgh Abbey, 
or the ruins of Melrose, or Kenilworth Castle, but for the phantoms that rise 
to welcome them at the wand of the wizard of the North ? 

How many are there, again, who would never cross the limits of the Ital- 
ian town that knew the history of Romeo and Juliet if Shakespeare had told 
us nothing of their love; whom neither the heath of Fores, nor Birnam Wood, 
nor Dunsinane, would ever tempt from the beaten path, had not the witches 
met the Thane of Cawdor on that heath, had not Macbeth seen those woods 
moving on his stronghold ? 

Who of the wandering band has not looked for Lord Steyne's mansion 
in London as much as for the solid stones of the Duke of Wellington's — does 
not glance for some reminder of the old Colonel and Clive Newcome among 
the Bluecoat Boys far more than for any of the real and famous among the 
long list of those boys? 

And for whom is not London peopled with the beings created by the 
fancy of him whom Lady Bulwer — before his death, in common with the crew 
who busy themselves in hunting out only his follies and blemishes since his 
death — styled the Aristophanes of the Pot-house and the Plutarch of the Pave, 
but whom the world will know long after his defamers are forgotten, as the 
Lord of Laughter and Tears ? What is the Court of Chancery to our travelers 
but as it gives them Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Flyte? Of whom of all that have 
entered the gates of the Marshalsea do they reckon but Little Dorrit? And 
do they not know the very house that will presently crack from top to bot- 
tom, the man whose mustache goes up and whose nose goes down when he 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



445 




KENILWORTH CASTLE. 



laughs, sitting in the window meanwhile? They walk through High Hol- 
born to look for the shop of Poll Sweedlepipes and the lodgings of Mrs. 
Gamp ; they follow Mr. Pickwick from the city ; Brighton stands to them 
only for Paul Dombey and "What are the wild waves saying?" the dialect of 
Yorkshire has no other significance to their ears than that John Browdie spoke 
it; Dover is sacred to Betsy Trotwood and the donkeys; Yarmouth means the 
wreck of Steerforth: England and the English are, in fact, only Charles 
Dickens. And now they will be following the footsteps of Macleod of Dare, 
perhaps, or looking up the localities of the next story-writer who stamps his 
die with such vigorous action as to impress all hearts with the personality of 
his fancies or his portraits. 

Do we not picture to ourselves and realize more clearly the domestic life 
of Egypt, better than the tomes of history can teach it, on reading Theophile 



446 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Gautier's ''Romance of a Mummy," and have afterwards explored an Egyp- 
tian tomb ourselves? What should we reck of the barbaric tribes of a little 
peninsula in the Levant and its rocky islets, if Homer had not held up his 
torch to their struggles? Do we not all feel that Homer created Helen? and 
should we care a straw for all Schliemann's work if Homer had never sung of 
Achilles and the Xanthus? But Homer having sung we must gc and see 
what Schliemann has dug up. 



Travel in Our Own Land. 

Yet great as I believe the advantages of foreign travel are, not to the in- 
dividual mind alone, but to all others with which that mind is afterward 
brought in contact, I cannot but think that a little, nay a good deal, of home 
travel has its advantages, too. 

Certainly in point of grandeur and picturesque beauty our own country 
confessedly carries off the palm, though we may have no cities so appositely 
placed as Rome in the circuit of her hills, or Venice on her isles; and if it has 
not the interest that tented tribe and caravan merchant and border baron have 
given to foreign spots, it yet has, as archaeologists maintain, an unwritten 
and wonderful history that every traveler and explorer may help to bring to 
light. 

When in the midst of an afternoon stroll in any sufficiently common- 
place region one mounts a hill to find a lake on its top, and presently sees that 
the lake is an artificial basin fed by presumable adits from higher hills and 
by the constant rain-fall, banked up for some unknown purpose so long ago 
that trees apparently of the primeval forest have grown upon its edges, then 
one knows that there is a history written there which he who runs may not 
read, and that in its vast hieroglyphic is held the story of some old race whose 
very traces have hardly other recognition. Is it any more pleasure, we won- 
der, to read the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone than, if it were possible, 
to read the burden hidden here ? And to the careful eye the whole land, it is 
said, and particularly in the more picturesque portions, is written all over 
with as evident a script of its secrets. 

To people who go abroad for the sake of the associations that foreign 
places have with historic names and identities, and for the sake even of gen- 
eral enlightenment, travel means much more than simply journeying from 
place to place, and sight-seeing by the way; but to people who go abroad 
merely for the sake ot scenery., doubtless tney might find as good at home. 

We question if the falls of Schaffhausen, whose polished chrysoprase Rus- 
kin loves, exceed the beauty of the falls of Montmorency, of Trenton, or Pas- 




THE SWITZER TRAIL, SIERRA MADRE MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA. (447) 



448 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

saic, or countless other falls in which we rejoice at home ; if the Lakes of 
Killarney are more wildly beautiful than Lake George, than Lake Tupper in 
the Adirondacks, than the Upper Mississippi at Trempealean Island or at 
Lake Pepin ; if the Rhine has more positive loveliness than the Hudson, or 
many legends better worth, or has half the loveliness of the blue Juniata; 
if any single scene in the Alps is superior to the scene at the mouth of the 
Willamette where the seven snow cones of Oregon pierce the purple, with the 
black woods climbing their sides till the clouds drift through their tops ; if 
any river in Europe at all equals either the Green, the Weber, or the Colo- 
rado, with their mighty canyons ; if anywhere in the world a rival is to be 
found to the valley of the Yosemite, or of the Yellowstone, with the weird 
color of its rocks and waters, the very witch-work of beauty. And with 
Quebec, a remnant of the old French civilization, across our line on the north, 
and Mexico, with its Spanish cities, its cathedrals, palaces, and plazas only a 
few days' sail away on the south, who shall say we have not a mimic Europe 
on our own borders? It has always been a marvel that people should desire 
to go abroad and inspect other countries when they have not yet seen the most 
famous portions of their own. If it is on account of the need of study, if it is 
through some yearning to tread in the footsteps of those whose fame is en- 
shrined in our love and reverence, if it is to see some battle-field where the 
world once hung in the balance, to follow in the path of some poet and learn 
for ourselves what it was that fed his genius, to explore the haunts of history, 
then, of course, nothing should stand in the way, and no poverty of home 
travel prevent the voyage ; but if it is merely for the sake of excitement, to 
while away the time, to say one has been abroad, to see charming sights, then 
the desire is not so comprehensible. I have even heard other people declare 
that they would experience a sensation of shame to stand awe-struck under- 
neath the dome of St. Paul's if they had never seen the white wonder of our 
own Capitol dome, or to be found admiring the bucketful of water tumbling 
over Lodore and have the curious stranger inquire concerning the Niagara 
which they had failed to see at home. The rest of the world, indeed, is beau- 
tiful, but those wuseacres who hold that the original Eden was in America are 
not so far out of truth's way as they might be; and for the rest, is it not 
written that "The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth?" 




STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 44g 



CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. 



Love of Others. 

In faith and hope the world will disagree, 
But all mankind's concern is charity. 

—Pope. 

His heart and hand both open and both free, 
For what he has he gives, what thinks he shows , 
Yet gives he not till judgment guides his bounty. 

— Shakespeare, 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan. 
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side. 

— Goldsmith. 
Alas for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun ! 

— Thomas Hood. 

Blessed is he that considereth the poor. 

— Psalms. 

The destruction of the poor is their poverty. 

— Proverbs. 

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth to the Lord. 

— Proverbs. 
Whene'er I take my walks abroad 

How many poor I see! 
What shall I render to my God 
For all His gifts to me? 

— Dr. Watts. 

I owe much ; I have nothing ; I give the rest to the poor. 

— Rabelais. 

I'm very lonely now, Mary, 

For the poor make no new friends ; 
But oh they love the better still 

The few our Father sends ! 

— Lady Duffer in. 

There will be little happiness in our house after all, if it has been built and 
conducted only for ourselves, and if we have not comprehended that the rest 



450 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

of the world has a share in it, and have not given ourselves the happiness of 
giving- — giving not indiscriminatingly but wisely and joyously. As the sea- 
son approaches when want is most keenly felt by the poor, and begging 
children appear at every city alleyway and country door, we are tempted con- 
stantly to pay no heed to the rule we have been advised to form of giving 
no alms at the door, but of referring the applicant to the bureaus of associated 
charity, or to one society or another that stands ready to afford assistance 
where needed. But from this denial and cold reference the heart shrinks, 
whether or not reflection and reason show that in referring those asking help 
to these societies we in reality give them far more efficient help than it is possi- 
ble for us to bestow ourselves. For certainly, in our large cities, charity has 
come under such a system, and philanthropy is so well organized as a business, 
with salaried agents, that it almost brings into being, as a counterpart, the 
profession of pauperism. 

Associated Charities. 

Let a person once prove himself in need and incapable of exertion, and 
bureaus with salaried officers make that person an object of solicitude ; there 
are hospitals in which the destitute child can be born, as3^1ums where it can be 
reared, schools where it can be educated, reformatories, if need be, where it 
can be trained, institutions from which later on it can be fed, and public fees 
at last with which it can be buried. In fact, being recognized and acknowl- 
edged as a pauper, it can be comfortably taken care of from the cradle to the 
grave. 

It has, of course, been a question with many who desire the advancement 
of the human race as to how far such wide charities are calculated to advance 
it, and whether, indeed, they do not lower its average of usefulness, virtue, 
and intelligence. So long as the tender sympathy with suffering which exists 
in the heart of almost all who are themselves free from want and suffering 
will not allow the beholder to see this trouble without trying to alleviate it, 
the imprudent, the improvident, and the reckless will go on defiantly multi- 
plying cares and wants, sure that they will be relieved in a community that 
can not be disgraced by the starvation of any of its members, and could not, 
from pure pity, suffer the thought of the starvation anyway, if brought to its 
notice, as such case would surely be. Yet the whole direction of this sort of 
thing, according to the opinion of the greater number of those who have 
made pauperism and charity a subject of scientific study, is to increase the 
proportion of paupers, and so to deteriorate the moral and mental condition, 
not only of scattered individuals, but of the race. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 451 

It is not to be doubted that all the modern ameliorations of life make life 
possible to those who in past generations would have died after a very short 
trial of existence. To-day these same examples live, but, for all that, they 
have not the strength to repel diseases that are, it may be said, the result of 
the intrinsic weakness of their own systems, and they transmit a vitiated or- 
ganism to their descendants and again lower the average of health and vital- 
ity in the whole mass. 



Transmission of Vitiated Organisms. 

In spite of the terrible condition of the poor, this fact reaches over and 
touches them at many points. We can not, moreover, lower the average of 
health without making work more difficult to do, and livelihood the harder 
to obtain; and here we travel in" a vicious circle, for the moment we encoun- 
ter the inability to obtain a livelihood in poverty we encounter sickly condi- 
tions again, brains undeveloped, and bodies poorly nourished, in crow^ 
and poisonous neighborhoods. It is known of every one who pays attention 
to the matter that extreme poverty is not favorable to the production of vir- 
tue ; on the contrary that it is the hot-bed of vice, and cannot help being so. 
It is equally well known that there are instances of extreme wealth of the 
same nature, that there is more than one noble family in Europe, and wealthy 
family here, notorious for some one vicious trait, and that where the case is 
not so bad as this, in many instances the families die out and become extinct 
through too great indulgence in luxury. Yet for one such case among those 
in affluent circumstances there are countless ones to be found among the so- 
called pauper class. Be they rich or poor, the intemperate and the profligate, 
owing to their infringement of the laws of nature, will leave few of their race 
and name behind them ; and those few are more likely than not to continue 
the sins and crimes of those who went before them, and so make sin heredi- 
tary. When the profligate rich continue to exist, it is because of an extraordi- 
nary original strength in the race, making a vitality hard to overcome; yet 
ordinarily they tend to extinction through other causes, as even in marrying 
they choose heiresses, the fact of whose wealth shows that they are the only 
daughters of their parents, and whose mothers perhaps were only daughters 
before them, if anything may be inferred from the accumulation of money in 
their single hands; and the pair start "housekeeping" with a hereditary ten- 
dency to keep their numbers small, while the tendencies of their manner of 
life are to disease and early death. Of course it will be claimed that they are 
those exceptions which prove the rule. 



452 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Extremes of Wealth and Poverty. 

It would seem as if the two extremes either of great wealth or of extreme 
poverty are equally dangerous to the social structure and equally to be 
avoided. The one has no object in life but to dissipate time upon enjoyment, 
a new enjoyment being constantly to be invented to replace the enjoyment 
that palls. The other, also, has no object in life but enjoyment — enjoyment 
which in such instance can only be attained by wrong-doing of one kind or 
another. Honest poverty is quite another thing — poverty that works and that 
refuses alms, but meets on common ground with moderate wealth and com- 
fort, each naturally supplying the wants of the other, each indispensable to 
the other, each holding up the pillars of the state, each liable to interchange 
conditions. It is not with that sort of wealth or poverty that the perplexed 
student of social science deals, and perhaps the time will come when it will 
enter upon the consideration of undue wealth as earnestly as upon that of 
undue poverty, and look about for methods that ihall prevent the excess of 
either one or the other. 

Giving at the Door. 

It is a little hard on the good housewife that she can not hear the timid 
ring at her own gate, and see the wan, pinched face and shivering figure there, 
without finding herself launched on the great social problem of all ages. She 
will hardly be likely to adjust matters with any delicate balance between sys- 
tems of philosophy or philanthropy ; she will not pause to think whether she 
is fostering crime and increasing the wrong she wishes to cure. She sees, 
at any rate, that here is a child into whom a good meal will put needed life, 
and for whom a full basket will make joy, and she proceeds at once to incur 
the displeasure of all the scientific philanthropists by disobeying their advice 
and feeding the child. Perhaps afterward she takes notes of the case, and 
refers it to the especial society whose duty it is to look after it, and not feel- 
ing quite sure even then of aid and justice, takes it upon herself to see if that 
society has done its duty by personal inspection, altogether in ignorance that 
she is thus interfering with a satisfactory solution of the problem, and is 
destroying the efficacy of organized charity by interfering with the organiza- 
tion. 

Th-ere 5s an old line familiar to most of us, "The poor ye have always 
with you," the force of which we seldom realize so much as in the bitter davs 
when the sun runs low and his beams are so niggardly. But I think that 
most of us will leave the question of equivalents and ultimate perfection to 
the political economists and gradgrinds when a little shivering form stands 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 453 

in the porch some freezing day, with a blue and pinched face and trembling 
lips, and asks for a bit of bread, and we shall give her the bread whether we 
are at liberty or not! How else would we sit down to a sumptuous dinner 
after having refused a crust to the little wistful beggar ? and do we not all feel 
that we would better b~ the victims of possible imposture than the instruments 
of certain cruelty? 

Many of those who occupy our luxurious homes have but little conception 
of what poverty is. The French princess who, when she heard during a 
famine that the people had no bread, wondered if they could not eat cake, 
although really she simply meant oaten cake, is only an exaggerated repre- 
sentative of many of our women who have never entered the houses of the 
poor, and know nothing at all of the way the world treats them. If these 
ladies who have only "lived in the roses and lain in the lilies of life," whose 
hearts are full of kindness, yet who are ignorant of what real deprivation 
means, should leave their fortunate fastnesses and go down into the purlieus 
of poverty, penetrate reeking cellars, climb rickety stairs, see the parched 
fever patient burning out his delirium alone ; see the consumptive on his 
straw, exposed to the draughts of leaky roof and broken window, without 
nourishment or dainty; see the hearty children hungry still on the daily divi- 
sion of a single loaf ; see hopeless girls, wrapped in shawls and without fire, 
sewing for life, as if they saw the monsters that stalked behind them ; see 
mothers aching for their children, and fathers empty-handed and cursing 
their fate ; see all the horrid, piercing sights of want — of want whose neigh- 
bor on the one hand is death, and on the other is crime — then, we think, 
their hearts would be sore among their treasures unless they could do some- 
thing to relieve a little shaie of the trouble with which every great city is 
catacombed. There are many of our wealthy women, let it be repeated, who, 
though they have heard of poverty, are so unacquainted with its actual re- 
semblance as to be able to form no idea of the real state of things. But, on 
the other hand, there are just as many more who make it their business to be 
informed of all this dark and sad under-life, and who spend a good part of 
their days in giving and devising, and assuaging the pain there still must 
be in spite of them. 

Lovely Examples. 

Indeed, I know lovely ladies who, in simple garb, spend some, certain 
hours of every day, in alleviating all the suffering that they can reach, and 
who then, going home, put on their silken garments and tread their velvet 
floors, and give no intimation of the sights they have seen to sadden the 
guests, unless the assistance of those guests is needed. 



454 STEPPING STONFS TO HAPPINESS. 

To all other women of wealth, when in the arms of their own comforts 
they know how strongly fire and furs and hearty food are needed by them- 
selves, let such examples be commended, not only since they will find their 
recompense in the act, but in remembrance of the assurance also that "Inas- 
much as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me!" 

But for our part, those of us that are not wealthy, we cannot run the risk 
of letting even possible suffering and death load the winter with their dark 
weight without examining into the facts of the case, or else, provided the power 
to alleviate is ours, we shall feel that the blood of these sufferers is on our 
hands. There is always, we know, some one member of our family who is 
able to look into these matters; and once having the report, we are at ease; 
if the case of suffering is a forged one, our sympathies are relieved ; if it is 
genuine, and if to lighten its load we are obliged to forego the new cloak, to 
delay the new silk, or abandon the opera tickets, we can be soothed by the 
consciousness that our heavenly robe will be all the brighter, and our souls 
will be all the more finely attuned by-and-by to the music of the stars singing 
together. Cold comfort, perhaps, but .sure ; for he that giveth to the poor 
lendeth to the Lord. 

Still, it is usually possible to assuage the pain of poverty without depriv- 
ing ourselves of enjoyment of real consequence, for the poor, it is said, are 
able to be happy on the superfluity of the rich, and the mistress of a single 
comfortable household has kept the wolf from the door of more than one pen- 
niless family during a whole winter. 

It needs, perhaps, a little more oversight of store-room and cupboard than 
it is always agreeable to give, in order to make sure that this superfluity 
shall go in the right direction ; a little more attention to the way of the cook 
with her friends who are not in such dire distress, thus to see for ourselves 
that the fragments of our feasts reach those in real need. Yet that is but a 
slight tax ; and we shall be well rewarded in the rosy cheeks of the children 
who come daily with their baskets, when we reflect that but for our oversight, 
the cheeks would have been wan and pinched and blanched, even if their 
owners were not underground altogether. 



A Degrading Course. 

It may be that it would be more agreeable if we could sit down at our 
novel and our fancy-work, our little bit of piano practice or water-color, our 
entertainment of callers, our afternoon stroll, our evening gayety, enjoy life 
in sybaritic fashion, and know nothing of the presence of distress in the 
world. But if we reflected upon the results even to ourselves of such a course 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



4S5 




MORE AGREEABLE IF WE COUL^ SIT DOWN AT OUR FANCY WORK. 



of life, we should see at once how injurious and degrading it would be ; the 
flies, the butterflies live as valuable a one; the flowers that, at any rate, scat- 
ter their sweet perfume abroad, like the aroma of good deeds, and in so far 
add to the enjoyment and happiness, live, we might almost say, a better one. 
Never to have our sympathies called out, our active interest in the needs of 
others, our active assistance ; never to be able to experience pity, that divine 
emotion which is but the pathetic side of love, which so enlarges and ennobles 
every soul that knows it ; never to join in the sorrows of others — why, it is 



456 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS.. 

like living in a glare of everlasting sunshine, and never knowing the depth 
and glory of the darkness that sets the soul and the imagination free among 
the stars. 

The Poor a Benison. 

In fact for those of us who have a right to be classed on the other side, it 
is a good thing that there are the poor to be looked after; for the poor are, 
indeed, a benison bestowed upon us, though sometimes in disguise; and 
the community in which there are no poor is by no means one to be envied. 
"God's poor," an old writer has it; and to make them ours also is but another 
bond to the Divine love. That is necessarily but a selfish and one-sided life 
which has no outlet toward the majority of mankind, toward that dark and 
dreary lot which belongs to the larger number of our f ellow-creatures ; for 
great wealth is but a phenomenal thing, great comfort belongs to the very 
few, and though a modicum of comfort belongs to many, yet the by-places of 
the world are full of those who want and wait and weary in their suffering. 

The brilliant flies, with wings of many colors, that we see disporting in 
the air are to be numbered, but the slugs and worms and blind beetles that 
live in the dark, and that we see in multitudes under any stone that is turned 
up in a pasture, are countless. 



What the Poor Have Done. 

But apart from the moral value of the poor to those in better circum- 
stances, what in the world would be done without them ? Who but the poor 
have built our railroads and tunneled our mountains and laid the piers of our 
bridges beneath the rivers ? who but the poor have mined our coal, smelted 
our ores, sailed our ships, built our houses, tended our gardens, groomed our 
horses, made our garments? who but the poor have done our household work, 
and have, in fact, by their laborious existence made our easy and luxurious 
one possible? If we lived in the wilderness, and there were no poor about 
us, all the millions of Croesus would not prevent the necessity of our labor- 
ing in order merely to keep the breath between our teeth ; it is only by their 
neighborhood that we enjoy our ease where we are. In the city we scarcely 
appreciate this peculiar blessing of the poor, as the machinery of city life 
works in such wise that we hardly feel our wants before they are answered; 
but in the country what would become of us without a neighbor in less lucky 
circumstances than our own, who would run our errands, do our chores, lend 
a hand at the housework in time of need, wait on table at a pinch, take home 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



457 




THE MOST WE CAN DO FOR THE POOR IS BUT A DEBT WE OWE. 



the extra washing of a guest, dig the paths in winter, clear up the grounds in 
spring and fall, do all and every odd job, man and wife and child, at home 
and abroad? The money we pay that family is a pittance whose outgoing 
from time to time we do not feel, but whose incoming is to them a bounty 
and a theme for thanksgiving, while the service they do for us we can never 
quite appreciate till by some accident we are deprived of it. And since the 
poor are, as it would seem, of such value to us, would it not be a shame if the 
good done were all on one side, and were of no value to them ? Indeed it 



458 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

may well be said — not only in view of the equities of the case through the 
bounty we have received from Heaven, but in view of the services the poor 
as a body render — that the most we can do for the poor is not a favor that 
we show them, but a debt we owe. 

After all, where there is a will there is a way ; and whether by associated 
or by personal endeavor, the poor are to be relieved, and relieved by us. We 
can not al! do as Anstress Hermans did with her money, but we can all appre- 
ciate what she did and emulate her example, with large means if we have 
them, in lesser ways if those are all that are possible to us. 



The Story of Anstress. 

There had been large expectations in the city concerning the day when 
Anstress Hermans should come of age — expectations in which, it is not too much 
to say, almost every one within the circle of her radiation, so to speak, partici- 
pated in a greater or less degree. Well-bred, well-educated, well-looking, of 
good disposition, the fact of her approaching majority caused the parents of 
eligible sons to count upon the advantages of her entrance into their respec- 
tive families, caused the youths themselves — without, therefore, being cox- 
combs — to think of the possibility of grasping at once what few of them would 
ever grasp in all the course of their lives, and caused youths and maidens alike 
to rejoice in the prospect of the festivities with which, according to im- 
memorial usage in such circumstances, the twenty-first birthday of the young 
heiress would most probably be celebrated. 

Whether the festivities were to take place or not, the parents and the sons 
just mentioned might have spared themselves the trouble of hope or of con- 
jecture ; for the affections of Anstress had already been engaged by the son 
of her guardian, a companion of hers since childhood, and who if not, as yet, 
entirely arousing her deeper nature, had succeeded in making himself as alto- 
gether indispensable to her daily life as he found her to be to his, and the 
only reason why the engagement between them had not been announced was 
because Mr. Jeffreys, the father of the young gentleman, and the guardian of 
Anstress, had, in order, perhaps, to save appearances by-and-by, expressed 
a wish that nothing of the sort should be considered definite and irrevocable 
until after Anstress had become of age, in which case, of course, it was wisest 
that nothing at all should be said of it abroad — Mr. Jeffreys taking excellent 
care, in the mean time, to hedge her about in good measure from any too great 
intimacy with other suitors, and to have nearly all the small things which 
make the happiness of life reach her only through this son of his, the tall and 
quiet, grave John Jeffreys. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 459 

Of course John could have nothing to do with bestowing upon hei any of 
the material comforts which she enjoyed; those were the gift of her dead 
father, dead almost since her infancy; but it had been the poll" :y of Mr. 
Jeffreys to afford those to her so stintingly, that when, throt.gh John's 
urgency, any greater largess and liberty were allowed to Anstress, it should 
seem like the gift of John himself. Of this, to be sure, John was totally un- 
observant and unaware, or it might have fared differently with Anstress, for 
the young student had some pride of character that would have proved a 
formidable obstacle to such course of treatment. But, as it was, Mr. Jeffreys 
could not think of letting Anstress undergo the expense of a coach and horses; 
but John represented her desire for an equipage so strongly, that, when it 
was at last allowed, it was quite as if John took her to drive with his own 
team, supposing that he had one; and when Mr. Jeffreys declared that his 
performance of his duty would be questionable if he suffered Anstress to pur- 
chase a set of sapphires on which her heart was fixed, it was John who had 
them sent to the house, and then displayed Anstress, decked in their sparkle, 
to his father, with such eloquence, that the guardian could not but relent, 
with much show of being overcome by the eloquence, but not at all by the 
sparkle, and it was quite as if John had given her the sapphires ; and it was 
John who really took her to the theatre (this was before the day of chaperones), 
to the picture galleries, secured the best seat for her when any gay pageant 
was in procession, brought her the news, and rendered her all those pleasant 
unobtrusive flatteries which make a young girl think what a sweet thing life 
is. It was John, too, who gave Anstress something to busy herself about and 
to feel an occupying solicitude for. It was to make his pipe doubly pleasant 
to him that she spent months in embroidering a smoking-cap, with so much 
gold braid that it was top heavy ; it was to prevent his taking cold that the 
silk dressing-gown was quilted in such stir and secrecy; it was for a pattern 
for John's satchel that she ransacked all the haberdasheries; it was to orna- 
ment his paper-cutter and book-marks that she learned to paint ; it was with 
regard to his comfort or his welfare that she pursued almost every step of her 
quiet and guarded life — and very likely, in the first place and principally, be- 
cause it was her nature to desire to be giving pleasure to somebody, and so 
far she had found nobody but John, and now it was a habit. She had lived 
in the same house with him as a child ; after he went to the university, and 
while she attended to her studies with a governess, his casual return was 
something to look forward for, since it always was a holiday by Mr. Jeffreys' 
direction ; the whole of his vacation was her vacation, too; and she was beam- 
ing and smiling with pride and enthusiasm, at last, on the day when he 
graduated with the highest honors, anZ overy one admired and praised, and 



460 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

he brought it all to her. John was a sufficiently fine-looking and mamy fel- 
low, of a temperate disposition and habit of thought, and of quite the average 
power of mind, so that there would seem to be no reason for condemning Mr. 
Jeffreys' course in having arranged the matter as he had between his son and 
his ward, and which would most probably have arranged itself to the same 
end had he let it alone. Anstress was perfectly happy in the relation — John 
was the top and flower of chivalry to her appreciation ; it was a great thing 
to be his handmaiden, to work his cravats and slippers, to learn his songs, to 
dance with him every other time at the parties that Mr. Jeffreys allowed her 
to attend on the promise of denying herself all the round-dances — a promise 
that he had no need to extort, since Anstress had a holy horror of round- 
dances, and, besides that, they made her dizzy. It was on driving home from 
one of tii^se. parties that Anstress, a happy little maiden, walled about by the 
security o f wealth, and ignorant of any of the trouble in the world, was first 
awakened from her dream of youth, and into real life. Till that night suffer- 
ing had never crossed her path, no one had demanded the exertion of her, and 
she had not troubled herself to think that everv one in the world was not as 
comfortable and content as she was. 

John had been away from town, and as he was to return in the midnight- 
train, she had left the little company — where, considering John's absence, she 
had been enjoying herself quite passably — something earlier than usual, and 
bade the coachman hurry home by the quickest route. The quickest route 
was by no means the pleasantest; indeed, it lay through the short-cut of a 
dozen squalid lanes, and Anstress, leaning back, with closed eyes, among 
her luxurious cushions, was startled by a yell and an oath, the shriek of a 
child, and then a loud tumult of cries. It was a drunken man, she afterward 
discovered, beating his child, and interfered with by the neighbors, till, in the 
general rough-and-tumble ensuing, the police brought peace about by carry- 
ing all the participants off to the station-house together. Anstress had made 
the coachman wait, in spite of his assurance that it was no place for the likes 
of her ; her heart was beating with terror in one great pulse all over her ; the 
vague things she had heard from Sunday to Sunday as to the presence of sin 
and horror in the world, without ever realizing them, became, all in a mo- 
ment, living truths, and if suddenly a yawning chasm of the bottomless pit, 
across which, flitted shapes of fire, had opened before her, she would have felt 
no otherwise than she felt that moment when these creatures rose and aston- 
ished her, by the glimmer of the street lights and the carriage-lamps — 
children that were incarnate disease, women that were only nightmares of 
women, men like wild beasts — all swarming to the scene of rio+ and around 
the white-faced lady in the coach. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 461 

"What does it mean?" asked Anstress, after the police has led away the 
originator of the disturbance. 

"Mane?" cried the nearest woman. "That it's a free country where Pat 
O'Harrigan hasn't the right to bate his own b'y!" 

"But he didn't know — he'd been drinking, they said" 

"Av coorse he had! And yese had been drinking yerself, an' the ould 
woman sint to the Island the same day, more betoken." 

"To the Island?" asked Anstress, with a puzzled tone. 

"Oh, yese a mighty foine lady," said the woman, turning off with a 
laugh. "But ye'll learn where the Island is sune enough, I'll warrant ye, if 
yese go round by day as naked as yese are by night!" 

It is due to the coachman to say that at this point he had to conquer the 
inherited instincts of a long line of McMurphys in order to prevent himself 
from precipitating as fine a shindy as ever occurred out of Donnybrook Fair, 
but he struggled manfully, and like St. Anthony, overcame the temptation by 
fleeing away from it. 

"What was that place where we stopped, James? — what street, I mean?" 
asked Anstress, when the coach drew up at Mr. Jeffreys' door, while she 
gathered closely now the cloak that had fallen from her forgetful shoulders 
when leaning from the carriage-window during the disturbance. 

"'Dade, miss, and you mustn't be afther asking me, " said James, "for 
'twould be all my place is worth if the master found I been driving you acrost 
a bit uv the North End." 

And not wanting to annoy him just inen, Anstress went up the steps not 
very much enlightened after all. John had come, for there was his hat in the 
hall. She ran into the drawing-room, and, in passing, paused a moment be- 
fore the long mirror, and with a glance the woman's last words came over 
her with redoubled force, and she looked at herself as she had never looked 
before — the white silk clinging to the form, with its atom of a waist, out of 
which the shoulders rose like those of a dryad from a flower, the gore and 
train drawing away the skirt from the shapely hip. 

"Oh, I don't wonder the woman said so!" cried Anstress. "It is just 
like a piece of statuary! Why didn't somebody tell me? And all the others 
were the same." 

And she darted away to her own room, with no thought of John or of 
anything else but sheltering darkness. 

The next morning Anstress was down long before breakfast, clad in her 
simplest guise, and had summoned James, and bade him put one of the horses 
into the trap and drive to the place where he had taken her on the night be- 
fore. James trembled for his situation, and assured her that indeed it wasn't 



462 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

safe; but as Mr. Jeffreys had not yet come down, the man had nothing to do 
but obey, which he did with better grace after Anstress had promised him 
perfect indemnity from Mr. Jeffreys' displeasure, no matter what happened; 
and driving to Messuage street, a little money easily melted the way before 
her, and Anstress had an initiation into a dark side of the world that her 
dreams had never visited. For when she entered a room in one of the houses 
of that dreadful district — a room several feet below the street, whose walls 
were stained with a perpetual ooze, under which the paper-hangings had 
rotted long ago, and the plaster had fallen in great patches ; where, across the 
floor, the leakage of a water-pipe sent a perpetual gutter that gathered in a 
pool at the other end, above which a broken window was half blocked up 
with a heap of garbage; and in the damp and the dreary half-light a wizened 
looking child of some dozen years was holding a gasping baby that had but a 
few moments to live — when Anstress, who knew nothing of poverty, who had 
hardly seen sickness, and never seen death, entered this cellar, it was only 
because she was determined not to do so that she did not faint away, for she 
grew sick and giddy at the sight and thought of it. The little girl seemed to 
be too absorbed or too unhappy to think the intrusion anything strange, for 
when Anstress, looking at the pinched and frosted face of the baby, asked 
hurriedly where the doctor was, the child sobbed out that her mother had 
gone for him, but he wouldn't come, or they'd have been here. Before she 
had finished speaking, Anstress was in the trap and away after the family 
physician of the Jeffreys; but when she triumphantly returned with him to 
the place, he was no longer needed — the baby had left it. 

"I don't know what I wanted it to live for in such a place as this!" cried 
Anstress, never thinking of recoiling from the woman on w T hose shoulder 
her hand lay, and looking at the pitiful object in her arms with streaming 
eyes. 

The woman turned away and neld her dead baby in silence — .she wanted 
at least the luxury of her grief alone. Anstress stayed a moment to try and 
soothe the little girl, who was crying wildly, and then laid the contents of her 
purse in her hands, and went out after the physician. As they closed the 
door of the cellar, the doctor began to reprove Anstress for being there. 

"Do not talk to me," said she. "What have they been hiding such 
things from me for? Now that I am here, I am going to see all there is to 
see. I don't suppose they can be quite as bad off in the upper rooms. What 
is the place left in this fashion for — the pipes leaking, the drains open? The 
landlord ought to be whipped through the streets!" cried Anstress, in a pas- 
sion. "Oh, to think of their living so, with puddles of water on the floor, 
and the children dying in convulsions!" 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 463 

il was no convulsions the child died of," said another woman, hurrying 
in and shoving by them in the narrow way. '"Twas starvation." 

"Do you mean so?" cried Anstress, catching hold of her and letting go 
again. 

"Indeed I do," replied the woman, hurrying on; "and 'tis no place for 
such as you, miss," she added, looking back, more kindly, "for the house is 
full of fever." 

"I am not afraid of the fever," said Anstress. "And I am going up- 
stairs. It can't be that I shall find death in every room." But afterward, 
Anstress said to herself that Death would have been a kinder visitant in those 
rooms than the squalor and the suffering, the sin and sorrow, that she found 
there. When she came out with the doctor into the free air again, the 
children on the sidewalk were saying that the little boy who was beaten last 
night had died this morning, and it seemed to her that the very sky had 
blackened since she went into that house. 

When Anstress returned home, breakfast had been waiting nearly an 
hour; but that was of small consequence, for the reproofs her unexplained 
truancy received were only affectionate ones, since to-day was her birthday 
and the day of her majority. Anstress took all their congratulations very 
quietly, sitting by John's side, and silently revolving many things in her 
troubled mind. 

"I am going to be told about my property to-day, am I not, John?" she 
asked, when they were alone. 

"I suppose so," said John. "My father has been busy in the library 
with your papers," he said. 

"Do you know how much it is, John?" 

"Not exactly; but a large sum — seven figures, perhaps." 

"What! millions?" 

"I fancy so. Father said once that it was enough for the income alone 
to be a fortune." 

' 'The income — that is, the interest? That is what other people pay for 
the use of it?" 

''About that." 

"Yes," said Anstress, reflectively; "I remember, in the arithmetic, the 
horrible things in percentage my governess used to drive me wild with. Six 
per cent. — and does one always receive six per cent, for everything?" 

"Oh, no; sometimes less, sometimes more. Sometimes the money is not 
lying at idle interest as in loans, but is earning profits as in railroads and 
shipping. Savings-banks pay you a small per cent., because they are safe; 
buildings pay twice as much, on account of wear and tear," 



4&4 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 

"Why, I should think the interest paid to half the fortunes in the world 
would eat up all the other half some day!" 

"So it would, according to figures. But, practically, there are found to 
be great offsets and drawbacks." 

"Tell me about it, John. I ought to know — oughtn't I?" 

"Certainly. But it is an intricate matter; you couldn't understand it, 
dear, all at once. I don't think I do myself. There is only one thing 
clear — that the rates of interest are exorbitant and that while philosophers 
quarrel as to what 'brought death into the world and all our woe,' it is cer- 
tain that that, and nothing else, makes half the poverty and sin there is." 

"There is something awful, then, in being very rich!" said Anstress, 
opening her eyes. 

"Riches are certainly a great responsibility," answered John, gravely. 

"Doesn't it make you afraid to marry me, John?" 

"Few people," said John, laughing, "are afraid to marry an heiress. 
But your property is settled on yourself, and is to be always independent of 
all the husbands in creation." 

"But you will have to take care of it for me, for you see I am completely 
ignorant, and don't know anything about any money except what I happen 
to have in my purse. " 

"Very well; and you will have to pay me a salary for doing so. I tell 
you beforehand, that my charges will be high." 

Something made Anstress turn away quickly. Was it possible that John 
was mercenary ? — that, after all, it was her money he meant to marry, or that 
salary belonging to the guardian of a fortune, rather than herself? Before 
the shadow had more than time to flit across her face, and bring with it and 
leave behind it a crowd of new thoughts, to add to all the others of the night 
and day, the bell rang, and a servant summoned her and John to Mr. 
Jeffreys, in the library. 

"My dear Anstress," said Mr. Jeffreys, with great solemnity, when they 
were seated around the library-table, which was half covered with files of 
papers tied up and labeled, "to-day you become the unfettered mistress of 
one of the largest fortunes in the city. You have been an orphan for twenty 
years, and the property your father left you has been steadily increasing 
during that period. I think you will be satisfied with its management. 
Here are schedules of the items and receipts. I expect you to examine them 
all scrupulously, but at your leisure. You will see that the large amount 
withdrawn from mortgages, and invested in woolen manufactures, at the 
beginning of the war, has doubled and trebled itself, while the bonds, which 
were bought at forty cents on the dollar, have also as good as cleared them- 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 465 

selves thrice over. With the other securities you will do as you please, but 
the bonds I shall still advise you to retain, in spite of any political clamor 
that may reach your ear, since, the coupons being negotiable, a million of the 
bonds may be shut up in one's safe, and so be practically exempt from all 
taxation, no one being the wiser, and they paying not a dollar's tax." 

"But, Mr. Jeffreys" began Anstress, and paused. Why did not John 

speak for her, she was asking herself. "I beg your pardon, sir, but — is that 
right? Of course, I don't know — but is it honest?" 

Certainly Mr. Jeffreys had the right to be displeased, but instead of that, 
he laughed. 

"Now, my dear Anstress," said he, "I must beg you, once and for all, to 
put away any quixotic notions you may entertain. Though, with your large 
fortune, you may deal heavy blows, yet, after all, you will find yourself fight- 
ing against a windmill, and get some backward buffet that will lay you flat. 
This is a matter of business. It is something very largely done" 

"But is it not against the law?" 

"Why — strict construction — certainly" 

"And in accepting the protection and benefits of the law, we tacitly 
promise to obey it, do we not?' 

"My child, nobody has time for such finely-drawn subtleties and Socratic 
questionings in a matter of business. I am very much afraid," said Mr. 
Jeffreys, with hesitation, "that you are not fit for the management of affairs 
of this magnitude." 

"But I suppose, dear sir," said Anstress, gently, "that it will not 
ruin me, that it will do me no great harm if I pay the legal tax on my 
bonds?" 

"No; but it will take the value of half a million out of your property, 
though — a good many thousands a year out of your income. ' ' 

"Do you mean to say," cried Anstress, "that I have been cheating the 
Government out of — I beg your pardon, Mr. Jeffreys, of course you can't 
mean that — I am so stupid!" 

Mr. Jeffreys wisely turned to something else, after having given John a 
searching look, for, to tell the truth, he was a little fearful that John was 
already as much of a doctrinaire as Anstress threatened to be. 

"Here," said he, "is a statement of your lands and tenements" 

"What! do I own houses, too?" she exclaimed. 

"Whole streets of them." 

"Do I? Why, how rich I must be!" 

"Yes, very rich, Anstress. And these are part of your most profitable 
possessions. Your father obtained mortgages of many of them, in payment 



466 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

of some outstanding bill, and so, one by one, a large part of the neighbor 
hood falling into his hands, he purchased the rest, to have it all under his con- 
trol." 

"Ah, it must have been a poor neighborhood, then?" 

"Quite poor — quite. Your father's grocery was about in its center when 
he begun" 

"My father's — I thought papa was a wholesale merchant." 

"So he was, certainly, afterward. A wholesale grocer and liquor-dealer. ' ' 

"Was he?" 

"But wealth obliterates all distinctions, my child. To become enor- 
mously rich is a sort of death in the old Adam, and resurrection among the 
proud and long-descended families. And at the time of his death he was a 
banker, and running great lines of steamships and the whole of a Western 
railway." 

"I don't know as I care about that," said Anstress. "It doesn't make 
any difference in our country, you know, whether you are grocers or idlers." 

"Doesn't it?" said Mr. Jeffreys. 

"But about the houses?" asked Anstress. 

"The houses — yes. They are all of the poorer class, of course, but yield- 
ing better incomes than better buildings do?" 

"Whereabouts are they?" asked Anstress, suddenly shivering a little, she 
knew not why. 

"Conduit and Messuage streets, both sides; places you never saw, my 
dear. ' 

"Is it possible?" Anstress cric^ out. "Mine! — those dens! — oh, I felt 
what was coming! When I said the landlord deserved — Am I — is my father 
responsible for that fever, those white women, those deformed children? 
Do we make money out of their wretchedness? coin their groans" 

"Anstress, you surprise me," said Mr. Jeffreys. 

"Oh, I had rather be one of them than stand in my place to-day! Why 
did you let me, sir — why did you let me — swelling my wealth with their rents, 
and that child starving! Oh, what did they make me rich for, and leave me 
such another inheritance? It poisons all the rest — it poisons life! Oh, John, 
what makes you silent? what shall I do?" And her voice broke down in a 
wild fit of weeping, that neither John nor Mr. Jeffreys could check, and she 
ran to her own room and locked herself in, and was seen no more by any one, 
until she sent for a servant, that day. 

It was late in the evening when Anstress crept down-stairs again, and, 
finding no one in the drawing-room, went into the cozy little flower-room 
beyond, where she was pretty sure to find John reading among his brilliant 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 467 

pelargoniums and sweet geraniums. And there he was, not reading, but 
busy with pencils and sheets of cardboard. 

"I hope you did not think me a wild barbarian this morning, John?" 
said Anstress, timidly. "I know Mr. Jeffreys did. But indeed I couldn't 
help it, and it was so sudden — and — oh, John! I was down in Messuage 
street, and saw a child just dead there not two hours before!" 

"You were, my darling? You? Alone in that brutal region?" 

"It has no business to be a brutal region. If anything had happened to 
me there, it would only have been a sort of poetical justice, a righteous 
retribution. But James was with me," said Anstress, as if it were necessary 
to believe his apprehensions concerning her danger. "I can't tell you the 
dreadful things I saw!" she added, with a sobbing breath. "I didn't know 
there were such things. There was a woman on the floor stupid with 
drink, there was — oh, John! — But there, I can't talk about it. I suppose Mr. 
Jeffreys is very angry with me?" she added, in a tone half question, half 
assertion, but one full of relief at having left her recent topic. 

"No, not angry," said John. "Something puzzled — never having looked 
at it in your light. He and I have frequently talked about it — I urging some- 
thing to be done, he not considering that he had any right, or that it was 
possible to improve the condition of such people." 

"Have you, John?" A light swept over Anstress' cloudy face. "Oh, 
John," she said, "I am afraid I have been very ungrateful! But there is 
something I must tell you — something that I mean to do, at any rate; and 
you must let me know if you don't think it best." She paused a moment. 
She did not like to tell him that she was absolutely resolved to do it, let him 
think of it what he would, although, unconsciously, both to herself and to 
him, not measuring her words, she had said little less than that; and, 
whether or no, she could not tell him that she had made the light in which he 
might consider her new proposition a test of his affection, a touchstone of his 
honesty, an answer to the question that had harassed her and fevered her by 
fits and starts since yesterday — the question as to whether it were her fortune 
or herself that John desired to possess. 

"I am listening, dear," said John, a^ she hesitated, giving her his chair, 
and half seating himself on a corner of the table before her. "What is it 
troubles your mind? Confession is good for it, as you have heard say, " 

"You know, John," she began a little doubtfully, "that if my father kept 
a corner grocery in the beginning and obtained possession of all these houses 
in Messuage and that other street by means of the bills that were run up 
there — you know what that means — people who own that sort of houses do 
not mortgage them for bread ; I have asked James and Nora about the habits 



468 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

of such people in that relation, and they have told me a good deal — and it 
means that they drank, and grew thriftless, and the bill at the corner grocery 
discouraged them, and they drank more and it was 'chalked down' to them 
till the bill was swollen large enough to cover house and home, and heaven 
only knows what became of them then! And such bills as those were the 
foundation of all my fortune. I don't believe my father realized what he 
was doing — for every one says he was a good and just man — do you, John?" 

"No, darling." 
"Now of course I can never find those people — they are lost, they were 
lost long ago. But the people who live in Messuage and Conduit streets to- 
day are their representatives; and it is the duty of my father's heir to take 
care of them in different fashion from the way they are being cared for now. 
I don't want to be rash or quixotic, and after thinking about how I can relieve 
them almost all day the best way that has occurred to me is this : To buy 
land enough in the neighborhood on which to build nice tenement-houses, 
and let them have them for the same rent they pay now, or less ; and then 
tear down these disgraceful sheds, out of which we shall first have moved 
the tenants into the new houses, and after that, build nice brick blocks in their 
place as fast as may be, with good water and drains and sleeping-rooms, and 
every facility for health and necessary comfort that rich people have and that 
in a city poor people ought to have just as much ; and so go on until both 
sides of both these streets are clean i * wholesome. What do you think, 
John?" 

" You can never hope to have your money back, Anstress," said John 
looking at her steadily. 

Anstress turned pale at the words. The money was nothing to her any 
more than if she had been a destitute girl without a cent for whom John would 
work and care and keep away the wolf. Was it after all the very worst that 
she had feared ? Was she weighing John in the balance and finding him 
wanting ? Was he going to endeavor to prevent this for the paltry sake of 
that money? 

"If you carry out this plan, Anstress," said John, "and place the rents of 
the new buildings at as low a rate as the tenants now pay, or rather, I should 
say, at exactly what they now pay, deducting repairs, insurance and taxes, you 
will receive about one per cent., or one and a half on your investment, which 
would generally be considered madness in relation to any purpose, letting 
alone the disposal of perishable property. The erection of the buildings will, 
besides, absorb nearly the whole of your fortune. And I presume the scheme 
would be everywhere thought of the wildest and most wanton, and be frowned 
on by capitalists as threatening to produce trouble for other landlords, and 



Stepping stones to happiness. 469 

there would be annoying paragraphs in the newspapers concerning the dis- 
sipation of a great fortune, and vexations without number." 
"But we needn't care for any of that, need we, John?" 
"Not in the least." 
"And there is no law to hinder us?" 
"Certainly not.' 

"And then, what do you say to it, John?" 

"Here is a plan for the buildings, that I have been drawing this after- 
noon" 

"What! Oh, John! have you really" — and Anstress fell upon his neck 
with tears and kisses. "How good you are!" she cried. "How wicked I 
am! I would rather have it than a thousand fortunes!" 

"My love," said John, smoothing her tumbled hair, "could you think I 
would object to this plan ? That, as a matter of personal pride I would not 
hail any such escape from the suspicion that must always fasten on a man in 
such circumstances, of having married a woman for her money? And that, on 
other grounds, I should not deem it the best and most desirable thing that 
you should use the means of relieving suffering which God has given you?" 
"How good you are, John!" repeated Anstress. "Oh! I never knew 
how much I loved you! I don't deserve you!" 

"Never mind, my darling; you deserve some one a great deal better. And 
now let us talk about the buildings, and understand exactly what we want." 

"We want everything plain but good, John; the rooms, for instance, 
high enough to give good air to breathe, but not too high to keep warm in 
winter; and finished in hard wood, so as to avoid perpetual paint, but not in 
black-walnut or mahogany, or any foolishness." 

"Very well. That is my plan, too. Built solidly, around a hollow 
square, with cellarage in which each family has a share that it is not possible 
for another family to interfere with ; divided into tenements of varying size, 
but so arranged that there shall be a living-room, and a sleeping-room for 
every two persons, with water and gas and tubs set, and all such requisite 
conveniences ; each floor having an entrance separate from the other floors, 
and an exterior elevator to lift provisions and coals, and take down garbage ; 
and plenty of drying-room for the clothes of every family, on the piazza run- 
ning round the backs of the building on the hollow square ; and the hollow 
square itself to be common property for such of the tenants of the first floor 
as choose to sit there, or to raise a grapevine, or a row of sweet corn, or a bed 
of flowers. Here are rooms, too, for a janitor, who, in consideration of his 
rent, shall preserve order in the building, and collect the rents; and, for the 
rest, the act of obliging the tenants not to abuse the houses, but to keep them 



470 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

decently and decorously, will be as good a civilizer and reformer as you can 
desire ; it will give the men that ambition and the women that pride which are 
found to be marvelous supports in well-doing, and by insisting upon it, your 
janitor will presently make a residence in these buildings a sure sign of re- 
spectability." 

"And when a single person has a share of the world's goods so far ex- 
ceeding most other people's shares, John, don't you think that one per cent, 
is enough to receive?" 

"Yes, I do — in equity. But then I may not be a good judge, for I have 
some radical theories about the right of a single person to shut up the use 
and accumulation of money beyond his own power to enjoy; that is to say, if 
a person, with his family, can enjoy everything the world at present affords 
of reasonable luxury and comfort at ten thousand a year, I am not sure that 
he has a right to add another ten thousand a year to his idle hoard, instead of 
distributing it to those in need as it comes in." 

"And one per cent, is the salary you would receive for taking care of my 
fortune for me, is it not?" 

"I think you can take care of it yourself, with a little advice now and 
then. I shall practice my profession, my dear, and the salary I expect to have 
for my assistance is love and the sweet services of my wife." Anstress' 
blushes, as he spoke, were not those of maidenly modesty so much as of 
mortification to think she had so misjudged the best and noblest of lovers. 
But she conquered them by the aid of some shame-faced kisses and embraces, 
and after this skirmish with her color, returned valiantly to the business in 
hand. 

"How much will one per cent, of the property be?" she asked. 
"About thirty thousand." 

"And that will certainly give us everything we can possibly want, and a 
great deal more for charity besides, won't it?" 
"Everything." 

"And are you quite sure, John, that you shall be satisfied with this ar- 
rangement?" 

"Are you quite sure, Anstress, that you will be yourself? The owner of 
a large property must remember that he is not acting for himself only, but 
for those that come after him. And when his property comes to be divided 
among heirs, those heirs, brought up in the habit of having all that the whole 
income could yield, are suddenly reduced to very different circumstances, with a 
thousand wants created and fostered which now they are unable to gratify." 

"People of great wealth, then, must live as if the division of their prop- 
erty had already been made, and they had but one share of it. But, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



47i 



whether they do or not, I don't think it is desirable for people to begin life 
any better off than you are now, John — do you ? It crushes all aspiration and 
self-discipline and self-denial. Don't you think so, John?" 

"It is very possible," said John, smiling at her rosy enthusiasm. 

"I wonder what Mr. Jeffreys will say to all this," added Anstress, pres- 
ently, and laughing in spite of herself while picturing her late guardian's 
horror at her intentions. 

"He will be struck with consternation," said John, "and will think at 
first that we both ought to have strait-jackets instead of wedding-garments. 
But I think if you leave it to me, I can bring him round, and even make him 
think it was his own suggestion, and so secure his assistance and experience, 
things not to be laughed at. As for the rest of the world, no matter. Per- 
haps your action may teach them" 

"Our action, John!" 

"Perhaps our action, dear, may teach them that all this wealth which 
they call theirs is really not theirs at all. But that the earth is the Lord's, 
and the fullness thereof; that they cannot take away this wealth with them 
when they go; that they are merely stewards of it for the time being, and 
must administer it to the Master's ends." 

"John, dear, you ought to be a minister," said Anstress. "Do you 
really love me very much?" — the cheeks were like two carnations now. "For 
if you would like it — you won't think strange, my saying so? you asked me 
once, you know — the day the corner-stone of the first building is laid shall 
be our wedding-day." And that was the end of the expectations of the good 
outside people, and there is to-day nothing but an outcry over two such misers 
as John and Anstress Jeffreys. 



472 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. 



The Genial Temper. 

Oh blest with temper whose unclouded ray 
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day. 

—Pope. 

Blessed is the healthy nature ; it is the coherent, sweetly confidential, not incoherent, 
self-distracting, self-destructive one ! — Carlyle. 

Think not thy word, and thine a,lone, must be right 

— Sophocles. 

Remember, when the judgment's weak the prejudice is strong. 

— Kane O Hara, 
To look up and not down, 
To look forward and not back, 
To look out and not in, and 
To lend a hand. 

— Edward Everett Hale. 

She was good as she was fair, 

None — none on earth above her ! 
As pure in thought as angels are, 

To know her was to love her. 

— Rogers. 

No falsehood can endure 
Touch of celestial temper. 

— Milton . 

The world is good, and the people are good, 
And we're all good fellows together. 

—John O ' Keefe. 
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, 
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. 

— Dry den . 
'Tis well said again, 
And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well: 
And yet words are no deeds. 

— Shakespeare. 

Give unto me made lowly wise 
The spirit of self-sacrifice. 

— Wordsworth . 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 473 

Manlike is it to fall into sin, 
Fiendlike is it to dwell therein, 
Christlike is it for sin to grieve. 
Godlike is it all sin to leave. 

— Friedrick Von Logan. 

Before we reach our ideal shores of happiness we shall have learned to 
make sure of something- besides the material advantages of life either for our- 
selves or others ; we shall have learned to make ourselves capable of receiving 
the ideal happiness, we shall have learned to cherish a sunny temper, and in 
doing that we shall also have learned to love humanity, and to put ourselves in 
relation to the claims of others, in some degree if not altogether out of sight. 
Many individuals possess what may be called an aptitude to suffer injury. They 
not only accept it at every turn and receive it at every pore, but actually seem 
to hunt it up and lie in wait for it. Nothing falls that does not hit them ; noth- 
ing breaks that does not hurt them ; nothing happens anyway that they do not 
reap a golden harvest of wrong from it. These people are miserable, as a mat- 
ter of course — that goes without saying; but they would be utterly and hope- 
lessly miserable if they could not at any moment scrape the substance of an 
injury together to solace some heavy hour destitute of other excitement. If 
somebody has not backbitten them, somebody is just about to do so; if some- 
body has not cheated them, somebody would like to cheat them, and if the 
number of the ill-intentioned living is insufficient to feed the appetite for 
boasted suffering, there is always an ancestry — fortunate thing ! — to fall back 
upon, whose wrong-doings have been innumerable, and the results of whose 
wrong- doings are incalculable. 

Of course these injured beings never do anything to provoke injury. They 
never insinuate or whine; they never openly or underhandedly charge the in- 
nocent with outrage; they never weary the patient with complaining, or repay 
good intentions with unceasing reproach, or "nag "the worm till it turns; they 
never abuse anybody's friends; they never criticise anybody's person; they 
never make themselves so disagreeable that people avoid them and escape 
them in self-defense; and they are never by any means so insolent over imag- 
inary injuries that it becomes impossible for those having any self-respect at 
all to explain the circumstances and do away with the error-, they never in 
effect do anything but conduct themselves like suffering saints waiting for their 
translation. 

Why, then, it may be asked, should anybody want to injure them ? But 
there is the mystery, the problem they are always trying to solve, and whose 
solution, though they reach it in twenty days, will never be other than to the 
satisfaction of their self-esteem; and they invariably fall back on a comforting 



474 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

belief that they receive the injury because of envy of their superior virtues, 
grace, beauties, or position. 

An Unpleasant Idiosyncrasy. 

These people, it may be seen, are possessed of a singular sort of folly, if it 
may be so mildly denominated, and it be not in reality an idiosyncrasy border- 
ing on the nature of insanity. There is wisdom ordinarily in doing the utmost 
to have the world believe you to be well thought of, held in esteem, and treated 
with consideration. If people in general observe that you have the countenance 
of others, you are tolerably sure to stand well in their favor; but if others are 
found to regard you as worth nothing but injury, the natural inference may be 
that nothing but injury is what you deserve. It is only the beggars that exhibit 
their sores, and those that have any common sense with their vanity, and wish 
the world to hold whatever is said or thought of them of consequence, instead 
of parading the ill conceit that others have of them, will take every opportunity 
of making manifest precisely the contrary, and swelling their self-importance 
by the means of it. But no such idea enters the minds of these unfortunates; 
their vanity feeds on their mart}'rdom. 

It is not always, either, that they are entirely satisfied with the ills they 
have ; they would like to fancy themselves receiving some positive and tremen- 
dous wrong. If somebody would slap their faces they would have real exulta- 
tion; if they could only be turned out of house and home, it would be triumph; 
if their wives would run away, if their husbands would try to take their lives, 
bliss — bliss, that is, of their melancholy kind — could hardly go farther with 
them. 

Love of Injury. 

In what the enjoyment of this sort of emotion consists it is not easy to 
say, nor even to imagine. If it were in the exhibition to spectators of the 
patience and meekness and fortitude with which the wrongs, real or fancied, are 
borne, one might comprehend something of it in view of the self-complacency 
gratified by such exhibition. But as the spectators see nothing of the sort, but, 
on the other hand, see every opposite method used — not fortitude, but whines, 
not meekness, but defiance, and no other patience than that simulated thing 
which is a mockery of those whom it accuses — it remains unexplained why 
there are people in the world who love to be injured, and who are happier the 
more injured they are — people who know that no one possesses such power of 
creating intense discomfort in the hearts and souls of those that mean to do 
right, such power to annoy, to humble, to worry, to sadden, to distress in every 
way, and who do not hesitate to exercise this power to its fullest extent, till one 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 475 

is ready to declare that there is no such instrument of torment in any home as one 
of these martyrs. For do what you will you can not avoid given the offense for 
which they lie in wait. They are always on the lookout for a slight; they scent 
it from afar as vultures scent their prey, and it is difficult to say when they are 
best pleased, whether in enjoving a sense of triumph when courted or flattered, 
or in nursing the sense of burning wrong when overlooked and forgotten. 
They imagine the slight, and believe in it, when it does not exist ; and when it is 
really impossible to believe in it, content themselves by picturing what the case 
would be if it did exist, until the suitable emotions are kindled in their 
breast, and they have the dramatic species of pleasure nearly the same as if it 
had been founded on fact. 

Perhaps it is their friend who has "slighted" them, omitted the personal 
mention of their name from some general invitation, forr otten in some pressure 
to send them cards at all, inadvertently turned the back upon them in the 
crowd, accidentally carried off a suitor, and accidentally swept them a trium- 
phant glance; coolness, f .^trust, icy discomfort, stalk upon the scene, to be fol- 
lowed after a time by a sort of slurred- over forgiveness that circumstances, 
whether of affection or convenience, make necessary. But perhaps it is not 
their friend, but your friend, that has done this deed, and woe is you for the 
distress and annoyance that then become yours through the agency of the indi- 
vidual whom your friend has outraged, until fresh outrage wipes out the mem- 
ory of the old one. 

To be slighted — that gives one an opportunity for eloquence in stating the 
reasons why one should not have been slighted, or else for assumption of 
humility in stating the reasons why the slight was not undeserved. It gives 
one the opportunity, too, of feeding an old grudge with the indulgence of a 
righteous indignation called for by self-respect, of nourishing a hearty spite by 
the recital of any piquant scandal concerning the giver of the slight that other- 
wise it might not be permissible to recite, or else of a lofty show of magna- 
nimity by merely hinting at the knowledge of such scandal, and without con- 
senting to gratify the tantalized curiosity of the listener ; and at all events it 
allows one to make an inventory of one's virtues, all by one's self, in wondering 
why an individual possessing such qualities should be made the victim of such 
wrong, and when the inventory is made, to feel doubly wronged, and to render 
uncomfortable every member of the household that does not entirely concur in 
the view taken of the slight. 

Fancied Slights. 

It is really both amusing and amazing to see how these fabulous injuries 
can be conjured up and made the most of with a morbid enjoyment, when every 



47^ STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

consideration of proper pride and self-respect ought to lead them to think it 
would be impossible for any one to dream of such a thing as slighting their 
claims to attention. Why should one slight them ? Are they coarse, gross, 
vulgar, ill-bred, ill-mannered, ill-natured, so plain as to be disgusting, so sim- 
ple as to be a bore, so spiteful as to be dangerous, so ignorant as to be a laugh- 
ing-stock, so low-born and of so low associations as to be contaminating ? And 
if for none of these, for what other reasons can they be slighted ? From personal 
dislike ? Yet why should one dislike them but for such or kindred qualities ? 
From envy ? One who supposes that hardly makes the listener a convert to 
belief in superior qualities calculated to excite envy; for one will n^t be 
envied unkindly, if rich, unless an unkind display of riches is flaunted in the 
face of those who have none; if well educated, unless contempt is shown for 
those less fortunate ; if virtuous, unless the virtue is self-righteous; if beauti- 
ful, unless the beauty is spoiled by consciousness, flippancy, heartlessness, and 
the assumption of " top-lofty " airs. No, indeed; one would have an exceed- 
ingly erroneous opinion of the very nature of society if it were for a moment 
supposed that virtue, beauty, learning, good fortune, were not welcomed 
eagerly by it in the persons of the happy owners. There is not so much of any 
of these fine things abroad in the world that any can be dispensed with; they 
are the very elements of that charming society that feeds the wit and delights 
the eye, the forces that make it lovely and of good repute, and wherever they 
are seen they are gladly welcomed and made a part of it. Just as a hostess 
would hail with satisfaction the acquisition of a choice prima donna, with her 
singing, at her evening entertainment, so will society hail with satisfaction the 
advent of any who can add by one iota to its pleasure; and if one is not hailed, 
if one is slighted, it is fair to presume that one is destitute of the means of af- 
fording this pleasure. 

Quid Pro Quo. 

For if one receives pleasure from society one must in return render pleas- 
ure to society; and before complaining of slights it is no more than just to sit 
down and inquire what right one has to other treatment. Has one a home and 
the means of entertaining in it, and so of being a valuable factor in this society 
and returning something of all that is given ? If not that, then has one such 
beauty as will be a perpetual feast at which the gazer asks no more ? Or if not 
that, has one intellect to lead, to control, to illuminate society, to add to its 
gayety, to lend its instruction, to direct it toward noble pursuits i If one, in 
fact, has nothing at all to give, and only the power of holding up one's pitcher 
to receive, should one feel entitled to complain if the pitcher be not always full 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS, 477 

and rum. ig over ? The inference is plain that one rather greedily holds too 
big a pitcher for one's share, and that less demand and less expectation would 
not find themselves slighted. 

A jealous disposition and an inordinate vanity are the things at the root of 
the whole matter. The disposition that is not jealous is not perpetually hunting 
for hurts; takes life as it comes; aware of ill-will towards none, so suspicious of 
ill-will from none; if overlooked, seeing or supposing some perfectly good 
reason for it, desirous rather of the comfort of others than of the flattery of 
self; not too sensitive to wounds which are like the bruises of " dead men's 
pinches;" and always convinced of the truth of the old king's wisdom which de- 
clares, "Better is a handful with quietness than both hands full with travail and 
vexation of spirit." And the nature whose restless vanity is not always expect- 
ing and claiming will never smart for want of recognition of the claims, will 
scarcely dream of rights before the rights are acknowledged, can not live, in- 
deed, in an atmosphere darkened by absurd conjecturings and imputings of 
evil intent. And to sum up the whole matter, one would suppose that the 
utter want of good taste in this complaint of fancied slights would repel the 
inordinate vanity as much as any other breach of the canons; and if one must 
needs fancy one's self slighted at every turn, one should go into training to get 
the better of the tendency, and should that be found impossible, at least have 
the sense to keep quiet about it, and not to vaunt one's shame. There is so 
much pain and trouble that is real in our few years of active life that it seems 
a sorry thing to add to it by all the weight of imagined trouble ; and we should 
perhaps cease to care for such selfish tribulation if we once properly mused 
upon 

" the little lives of men. 
And how they mar this little by their feuds. 



The Undisciplined Temper. 

For living in the house with these and such as these is like being stung to 
death by flies. There is nothing calculated to work such havoc with nerves, for 
you are in the perpetual uncertainty and unrest of never knowing how the 
simplest action is going to be construed by one whose temper is undisciplined, 
or what may be the consequences; and you dance on this mental and moral 
tight-rope till every point is strained and sore, trembling now in momentary 
expectation of an outburst, springing up in relief that it did not come, bowing 
beneath it when it does ; and if you do not at last find refuge in insanity, it is 
because you have already found it in indifference or dislike. 

For the forms of this undisciplined temper are numberless as they are 



478 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

oppressive ; they are not confined to that with the too quick sense of injury; there 
is the simply and nakedly tyrannical, which raises the lightest whim to vision- 
ary importance and overbears everything, feelings, scruples, beliefs, wishes, 
for its gratification. And the worst of this form is that when the gratification is 
assured a total change of sky takes place, the offender becomes altogether 
sunny, and insists upon it that there is no sweeter temper in existence than the 
one that was just bursting over your head, and proves it to the world by the cir- 
cumstance that you who have just been outraged and trampled upon are not 
feeling so sweet and sunny yourself as might be. There is the sinister form 
of ill-temper, too, which works underground, flaring up at last like brushwood 
at the touch of a torch, that scorns to explain, broods over wrongs till wholly 
mad, whereupon it is clothed in a robe of fire, and its poor object is reduced to 
the condition of a slave. There, too, is the bitter one that lets the aqua-fortis 
bite deeper and deeper, and carries a raw spot that, singularly enough, causes 
you to feel as though some of the aqua-fortis had been thrown in your own face. 
There is the discontented one, that wearies heaven and earth with its whine. 
There is the severe one, with which the cutting tongue is a weapon that 
wounds and turns in the wound, sure always to condemn and never to con- 
done. And there is the violent one, whose bolts fell you to the ground, and in 
dread of which you live as if you had a thunder-cloud in the house. And then 
there are all the infinity of the lesser varieties and combinations of these, with 
which, to quote an old saying, one lives " the life of a toad under a harrow." 



The Sinners Themselves. 

Often enough the unfortunate possessors of these tempers are as unhappy 
as the unfortunate victims, if not more so, for they live in a state of burning 
discomfort and suffering equal to that which they inflict, and it is all a thousand 
times aggravated by the real inner knowledge that they have nobody but them- 
selves to blame for it. Every outbreak in which they indulge, and the habit of 
which has grown by indulgence uncontrollable at length, has to be followed by 
a corresponding fit of remorse, although, sooth to say, the remorse is quite as 
disagreeable and trying to the first victim as the offense before it was. 

But these sinners are of a class that assuredly deserve their suffering, and 
they do not by any means deserve pity as they do who have to encounter the 
blow, are subject to the daily torture, and live and move and have their being 
with fluttering heart and bated breath ; and if they do deserve it they do not 
have it. One thinks with far more interest than of this subject of his own 
despotism of the poor soul who is harrowed beyond bounds by the testy, 




LOVE IS A POTENT SHIELD AGAINST MANY TROUBLES. 



(479) 



4 8o STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

touch)' mate to which it is chained, whether it be the husband or L oe wire of a 
house, the parent or child, sister or brother, mistress or maid — the ssul origi- 
nally inoffensive, glad and gladdening, that has been stirred to its depths by these 
cruel tempests, and made turbid with sense of injustice and resentment, till 
daily life is shipwrecked on desert islands, with gall and wormwood for all 
banqueting, with all sunshine darkened, all affection gone to the bottom, all 
sound impulses overwhelmed and turned to evil things, and with whom, under 
the daily and hourly wrongs, hatred has taken the place of everything but bald 
duty. 

It is a perilous thing to belong, in another way, to such ill-doers as the 
owners of the tempers of which we speak, unless one is willing to receive a 
share of the condemnation; for those subject to them look with stern 
criticism upon one in such case, and grow to dislike not only the 
ill-doer, but those behind the ill-doer, who failed in early life to draw 
the fangs. For as hard a part of it as any is that it could in such meas- 
ure have been prevented by proper effort in the beginning. It is some- 
thing that comes home to mothers and nurses bitterly. For the child born 
with delicate and sensitive nerves could, with the watchful care it had a right 
to have, have been spared the irritation which increased the sensitiveness; and 
that child received the irritation and that child's victims bear their wrongs 
more largely than otherwise through the negligence and indulgence of guar- 
dians who gave to-day without thought and deprived to-morrow without reason, 
who found it easier to administer a slap than to make the exertion of hindering 
the necessity of the slap by observation, by warding off, by explanation, by 
caressing — for a caress, even when undeserved, has soothed many a sore spirit 
and led it to better resolves. Love is a potent shield against many troubles, 
and they who love their children better than they love themselves can go a 
great way in triumph in the effort even of overcoming nature. And certainly 
the distress occasioned by these undisciplined tempers in mature life is never 
lessened by the thought that it might all have been hindered, and homes that 
have been made deserts might have been Edens. 



The Sulky Soul. 

For, look you, you rise in the morning, the bird singing in your heart, 
sunshine all about you, with never an echo of discord in your thoughts, meaning 
kindly to all the world; you feel well and young and happy; you run lightly 
down the stairs; you open the door of the breakfast-room gayly — and as if a 
cloud fell on you, you are conscious, in a flash, of a different moral atmosphere. 




IT IS NOT EASY TO THINK IT IS NOT AS TINE AS IT CAN BE. (4 Sl ) 



4S2 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

one of blackness and gloom and bitterness, let the sun sparkle on glass and 
silver and china never so brightly. What is the matter ? No one knows. One 
solitary individual of the family has retreated into a shell — not that, indeed, 
for if it were merely a retreat into a shell it could be endured ; but it would 
seem nearer the truth to say that that individual's soul has left its body, and 
h is been replaced for the time being by a sour and evil spirit. At any rate, all 
this blackness and bitterness is infused into the bright and happy, atmosphere 
of the house, till it is as dark as doom, from that solitary individual. What 
occasioned it ? Again, nobody knows. It is, perhaps, a case of what children 
used to call " getting up wrong end first." Some inexplicable offense has been 
taken; some unremembered contradiction has rasped the sensitive nerves and 
been brooded over in the watches of the night till it has seemed to be the throw- 
ing down of a gage ; some careless remark has been misinterpreted and kept 
rankling; some real injury has been unforgiven, unforgotten, and swollen into 
quintuple proportions; or else some too rich morsel has produced a heavy indi- 
gestion, and hinc illcz lachrymcs. 

We are not quite sure that a mind at rest with itself, conscious of no blame 
in the matter, can have — if it is able to overlook the annoyance of a disturbed 
equilibrium of the household — much, more amusement afforded it than is 
afforded by the conduct of such a person. The affected haughtiness of compo- 
sure, the cutting silence, except for now and then more cutting speech, which 
is frequently so double-bladed as to cut the cutter, and the dignity magnificent 
as Malvolio's, are all frequently as good as a play to the " looker-on in Venice." 
For the person who is in the sulks unavoidably betrays all the workings of the 
mind so plainly that they are as quickly and thoroughly read as one moving 
about in a lighted room is \ T isible to the watcher in the dark outside; and if 
surprise at the pettiness gives pain, entertainment at the pettishness quite 
counteracts it, provided one does not become so provoked at the silly childish- 
ness as to lose temper one's self. In fact, in a large house full of people, when 
amusement begins to flag, a bad fit of the sulks does not come in at all amiss, 
and it would lend quite an agreeable variety in the way of fun if it were not 
that one is apt to feel as the ancients used to do concerning one " possessed," 
that the person is sacred in its possession either by angelic or demoniac power. 

If this were the end of it, a fit of the sulks would not, perhaps, be so bad as it 
is painted; for one could bear having silence brought about where there used to 
be pleasant converse, could bear the impending sneer, the descending fleer, for a 
day or so, although that day or so is then like something blotted out of the 
year by an ink spot ; but the sulking disposition is also the suspicious one ; and 
one is conscious, whenever it has a kindred soul to answer it among the other 
inhabitants, of living in the midst of conspiracy, so that one fears to grow like 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 483 

one's surroundings, and presently suspects hidden meanings in innocent words, 
evil in the handling of a chair, poison in a cup. 

Yet when we have made the best of it, a person with this sulking liability 
is a very uncomfortable companion, in no way to be relied on for comfort or 
enjoyment, since so likely to fail you at a pinch. And it seems to us that when 
the fit comes on, if the person has not discretion enough to withdraw voluntarily, 
a request should be made in the name of the household for that individual's re- 
tirement to the secrecy of a private room till the inner weather has cleared; for 
no one has a right, through any reason under heaven, to poison the peace of 
those who have not offended in order to retaliate upon the one who does 
offend, even if the offense is real; and when the offense is imaginary, the sulk- 
ing party is no better than the insane, and can not complain of such mild re- 
straint. Of course it goes without saying that when the poor soul descends at 
last with a smile, no notice should be taken of the past. 

Nevertheless, every wrong brings its own right, and the sulker is punished 
in the sulks themselves, since the gloom and bitterness must be all but un- 
bearable to the person who suffers them inwardly, and finds all the world as 
black as if followed up by a cuttle-fish. And the punishment is the more felt 
because, owing to the very law of compensations, the one most subject to the 
sulks is often sparkling, vivacious, and pleasure-loving enough, when not 
jostled out of bias, to make light hours and gladness chase each other about the 
house. 



A Remedy. 

But if our lot is inextricably mingled with that of these owners of vicious 
tempers we have two things to do— one to help them to overcome the demon 
that possesses them, and the other to walk in the paths of right ourselves, con- 
sidering these among the trials that are to work for our blessing if we treat 
their temptation with the strength that overcomes. For no man lives to him- 
self alone. The world is such a vast affair with its mighty physical agencies 
and its interwoven co-relations of vitality, that the most of us would shrink 
back awed at the idea that we had anything to do with the task of helping it on its 
ascent to perfection. All the more as our first thought about it is that it is already 
perfection. But we ourselves are in reality a part of this beautiful world, not 
parasites on it; and as we do not yet claim perfection for ourselves, why should 
we claim it for others, or for the less noble and more material objects of nature? 

In truth, there are few things in the world completely perfect, although 
everything may be on the road to be so. The wild flower it is possible to take 
and train to fuller development, the wild fruit may be grafted, the jewel may 



484 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

be set free and faceted and polished, the savage may be cultivated, and the 
earth, we know, is to be reduced and the wilderness made to blossom like a 
rose. All that is comparatively simple work, though; it is material, and to be 
done by material means energized by the spiritual determination, will, pluck, 
endeavor. 

The Perfection of the World. 

It is not easy to look up at the infinite hue of the sky flooded with sunshine, 
and think it is not as fine as it ever can be ; to look up through the deep vaults of 
night and measure off heaven after heaven with the near and distant stars, and 
fancy improvement possible; to see in what the landscape from the mountain- 
side, with its sea of hills, its long levels, and its melting colors, can be made more 
glorious. Yet if it is not possible to our eyes, more perfect eyes may see the 
need, more perfect powers be shaping the means. For why else was the huge 
gaseousness of the sun compressed and its planets sent rolling off, to what else 
are we to suppose the earth goes forward on her way in space, to what 
other end than ultimate perfection can the whole solar system be moving up 
with all its stellar mates to its central point, and the great pendulum of the 
starry motions be swinging backward and forward with boundless ages for one 
motion, but that at each long swing the whole shall be finer than it was before, 
that the little earth itself become the fitter for the throne it bears in the thou- 
sand years of peace? 

And if this is so, can we suppose that there is one particle of matter or of 
spirit that has not its portion of the work to do, is not directed upon that work, 
whether consciously or not, and is obedient to the great purpose only just so 
far as it obeys this direction? 

If we find it impossible to imagine what part can be given us, with our 
infinitesimally small powers, in the perfection of the universe or the refining of 
the planet — for we know, of course, it does not mean we are merely to keep our 
flower beds bright and make two blades of grass grow where one grew before 
— perhaps we may find it worth while to consider whether it does not mean 
that by truth, patience, unselfishness, through countless generations, we are to 
transmute the very dust of the earth into the dust of heroes, martyrs and 
saints. If the earth is to be reduced, are we not a part of the earth? and is 
there to be no reducing in our own system as well as in the solar system? 



Protoplasm and Dust. 

For the religionist and the scientist have but one story to tell when it is 
sifted down to its last statement, and the protoplasm of one can claim to be 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS 485 

nothing more than the dust of the earth of the other. Being made of the dust 
of the earth, with all her strange currents kneaded through us, her magnetic, 
her electric, her finer and her grosser ones, and with her impetus upon us, when 
we return that dust to her shall it have gained nothing for our possession of it , 
shall the grosser have endured no refinement, the finer not have become finer 
still, until in its own vast period all the substance of the great globe itself shall 
be the better and richer for the life our souls have lived in it? 

Whatever be the especial part of the work assigned to humanity, we know 
that some work it is, since it is contrary to the economy of nature, manifested 
everywhere else, that we should be here for any idle purpose; and all we have 
to do is to follow the open passage and perform the work we find at hand, feel- 
ing very sure that if we are doing wrong in nothing else, we are doing right in 
this, and not only reducing the earth and our portion of it, but, it may be, 
sending out some of the vital energy of our well-doing to regions beyond — who 
shall say? 

Let what will be false and fanciful, this must be true — that he who does 
persistent wrong, he who is treacherous, mean, cowardly, cruel, animal, and 
base, is rebellious to the directing power, is betraying his trust, can not be 
helping forward the great ends which tend only to light and goodness. While 
just as true is it that he who is pure and noble, self-forgetting and faithful, 
gentle and sympathetic, scorning falsehood, disdaining sensualism, can not but 
live in obedience to that directing power, can not but so have put himself into 
communication with all the channels of goodness that virtue runs like the blood 
in his veins, and, little as it may be, he lends his share of strength to the work 
of lifting the universe toward its perfect consummation, although it be as in- 
sensibly as any single ray of light helps in bringing about the dawn. 



Right and Light. 

For if we had no other instruction we should know by instinct and obser- 
vation that the ways of right were the ways toward light, and those of wrong 
toward darkness. We know how smooth truth makes the way for our feet, and 
how entangling falsehood is; we know whether curse or blessing follows theft; 
we know what pleasure we receive in giving pleasure, what absence of pleasure, 
to say the least, and sometimes what suffering of remorse, in refusing it; we 
know how cruelty can recoil upon ourselves in pain, and what bodily evil and 
degradation sensuality drags after it, and if there were no other monitor to tell 
us of the heavenly sweetness and light, observation of these facts alone might 
do it. It is easy, then, for us to see that in doing right every individual is 



4 86 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

helping to work out the Divine purpose; and we find a fresh dignity belonging 
to the humblest soul on earth when we think of the share it bears in the work — 
the beggar who is too proud to steal and too ill to work sending out some virtue 
to wide nature, and the little child that resists the temptation of the sweetmeat 
jar is lending his mite in the resistance to this upward flight of the stars, as 
relatively as the saint and martyr who lays down his life for his faith. It gives 
us all a proud sense of value ; but it gives us at the same moment one of 
humility, as we remember that loathsome beggar and little child can bear the 
burden as well as we, and that our most earnest endeavor at great crises being 
to us exactly what their earnest endeavor in small crises is to them, they are 
transmuting common clay into heroic dust with the same vigor, and are lending 
their energy to the energy of the stars. For circumstances may make crises 
small or great, but we can only fill them with the measure of our nature and 
will, and their mite may help forward as much as our largess, if it is not, indeed, 
their largess and our mite. 

" O power to do ! O baffled will ! 

O prayer and action ! Ye are one. 
Who may not strive may yet fulfill 
The harder task of standing still. 

And good but wished with God is done." 



Transmuting Clay. 

We shall do little then in our effort at transmuting clay to more angelic 
material till we have attained at least something like self-forgetfuiness. " There 
is no cross," says Fenelon, " when there is no self to suffer under it." Those 
of us who are in the sad habit of complaining of this world as a dreary abode, 
a dark pilgrimage, a place of graves, a mere halt between ante-natal gloom and 
the gloom of the tomb, would find it a very difficult thing if for any portion of 
the time while we are in it we could but forget ourselves. 



Self - Forgetfulness. 

Forget ourselves ? That is, to remember other people till their trials, 'f 
they do not crowd out our personal trials, occupy equal place with them, till 
their identity looms up and corresponds with our own ; or simply, and in better 
words, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without doubt we are privileged to 
take our choices of the neighbor, the point being only to make sure of the 
neighbor at all odds — the neighbor whose benevolent conducting power leads 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 487 

away from us all that surplus introspection and brooding, all that energy for 
sympathy, which, directed only upon our own affairs, work havoc there. 

It is not to be supposed that in a phase of existence where good is still to 
be wrought out of evil on its upward way, and where so many various elements 
are still clashing, that any individual condition can be perfectly and perma- 
nently happy. The little child, surrounded by love, without a care, the young 
person Just pausing on the threshold of maturity, to whom the future is 
wrapped in a golden haze of hope and expectation, are the only ones to whom 
life seems bright and faultless; are the only ones who, if you asked them, would 
be positively and absolutely sure that life was something to be thankful for; the 
only ones filled with satisfaction through the " mere joy of living." 



The Child's Troubles. 

But to soxiie even of these young beings the little cloud upon the horizon 
overshadows that heaven of theirs: the apparition of the multiplication table 
rises and shakes its horrid hair, in its train a long procession of evils — the fear- 
ful ten to be carried, the awful mystery of the possessive case, the necessity of 
learning how to spell phthisic, and eventually metempsychosis, the deprivation 
of dainties with which elder people provoke younger palates, the obligation to 
work when sunshine invues to play, to go to bed just as the lamps are lighted 
and everything is bright as fairyland down- stairs, the subjection of the will to 
another's in all respects and at all times, the reaching forward to that haven of 
rest, the condition of the " grown up:" too soon do these troubles, and such as 
these, adulterate the happiness with which the child opens its innocent eyes 
upon life, and too soon do corresponding troubles beset the youth or maiden 
who has found, so far, Pippa's satisfaction with life, but to whom, as the years 
fly by, come disappointments in love, in hopes, comes blasting of ideas and 
aims, comes the sense that it needs, indeed, another world to complete this. 



Another World to Complete This. 

And so it happens that there are few, if any, human beings among us who 
are completely and rapturously happy for any length of time. Lovers in each 
other's arms, benefactors relieving suffering, mothers clasping their babies, 
actor and poet under the fresh laurels of triumph — all these know surely 
what the ecstasy of bliss is. But the child leaves the mother's arms, the bene- 
factors receive ingratitude, the lovers weary or deceive or die, the actor or the 
artist finds that one warm heart had been better than the hollow ring of all 



488 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 




TO GO TO BED JUST AS THE LAMPS ARE LIGHTED. 



those plaudits; and the ecstasy with all has been brief. And that is what the 
moan is about — that it can not last to all time, as if in a world that " spins for- 
ever down the ringing grooves of change," every moment, with its invisible 
forces, must not pull the present combination apart to effect a new one, and as 
if it were anything but childish kicking against a wall to remonstrate or com- 
plain of the inevitable ; for by submitting and trying to make the best of it, 
something, at any rate, is to be gained. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 489 

It being conceded, then, that every lot in life has its bitterness, while 
" laughter shall be mingled with sorrow, and mourning take hold of the end of 
joy," that corroding cares beset the possession of our best earthly treasures, it 
becomes a self-evident truth that the chief relief from that lot is to cease to 
consider it. "As a moth doeth by a garment, and a worm by the wood, so 
the sadness of a man consumeth the heart," says the old Latin Vulgate; 
and we can forget our own sadness best by grieving over the sadness of 
another, by rejoicing over another's joy. 



Changing Our Condition for Another's. 

In the one case we shall find that ours is not an isolated instance, but that 
each soul bends beneath the weight of its own especial cross, and that light 
as such cross seems to us in comparison with our own, yet if we took 
the temperament and situation of its bearer with it, we should find it 
just as grievous. W e see some woman of genius, at whose voice, with whose 
beauty, beneath whose power, every night a multitude thrills; we con- 
template her brilliant destiny ; we envy her while we admire her ; we wonder 
at partial fate, and laugh at the idea that this fortunate creature has any cross 
at all to bear : we do not know that she has given her heart and her happiness 
into the keeping of an unworthy man, so neglectful and so base that her honors, 
her genius, her beauty, are mere dross to her, and that whenever she lies down 
to sleep she would be grateful if she were never to wake up. We see a man 
before whom senates tremble, who moves a nation so that as his heart beats, 
the hearts of all its people beat, whose name resounds to the farthest parts of 
the earth. We ask could he have more ? 

But we do not know how he suffers under the wide slanders that falsely 
persecute him, and while they seem to us mere gnat stings, eat up his happi- 
ness like a canker. Or we see another, on whom fortune waits, who handles 
states like pawns, who is the personification of power, whose station would be 
to us as impossible as Alnaschar's dream. We do not know the secret shame 
for some ill deed that follows him like a Nemesis ; of the future moment of 
horror that darkens all the splendid moments now, when at his death, if not 
before, the bubble of his fair fame shall be pricked ; or else of the hidden 
trouble in his home that makes all success mean failure ; or yet of the unwhis- 
pered disease that gnaws, vulture-like, at his vitals, and for which we can have 
no pity nor sympathy, since it is death to a politician's hopes to be known to 
suffer from disease at all. We see a lovely woman rolling by in her luxurious 
coach : her velvets, her jewels, her flowers, her hosts of friends, her devoted 



49Q 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



fSiisL 



\\ 'iiirii 




ROLLING BY IN HER 
LUXURIOUS COACH. 

husband, her life at 
home like a chapter 
in the beatitudes, all 
move us to imagine 
what ill thing shall befall her, and so make matters even. We do not 
know that an ill thing has already befallen her; that her way has lain over 
graves, that her heart aches and longs for the children that are denied her, and 
that without them all the rest is naught. This — the knowledge of all this — is, 
perhaps, but bitter consolation for one's own grief. 



Rejoicing in Another's Joy. 

Yet, nevertheless, it hinders one from supposing any particular malevo- 
lence on the part of the powers of the universe directed at one's self, and affords 
one, as we have said, the opportunity — in bringing amusement to these others, 
relief, oblivion for the moment — of forgetting one's self and one's own burden. 
And in the other case — that of rejoicing in the joy of the fortunate possessor of 
that blessing — the very exertion of casting aside envy, of refusing to listen to 
the evil suggestion concerning injustice, brings back a shadow of that joy on 
us; a ray of happy satisfaction, it may be also, with our own virtue, which is 
cheering, and gives us certainly pleasant and heart-warming sensations that we 
should not otherwise have known. 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 491 

For whether we are glad on our own account or on another's, gladness is 
gladness, and it raises the barometer of the soul to the mark of fair weather 
there; while so long as we have felt that throb of sympathy, have identified 
ourselves with that other joyous soul, so long, at any rate, we have known self- 
forgetfulness and have mastered happiness. There is one light of the stars 
and another of the moon, but it is all light, whether it be direct or reflected. 



The Golden Time for Love. 

It is Margaret Sangster's sweet spirit that sees in all times the time to for- 
get ourselves and love our neighbor, saying: 

" When is the golden time you ask — 

The golden time for love ; 
The time when earth is green beneath 

And skies are blue above ; 
The time for sturdy health and strength, 

The time for happy play, 
When is the golden hour? you ask ; 

I answer you, 'To-day.' 

To-day, that from the Maker's hand 

Ships on the great world sea 
As stanch as ever ship that launched 

To sail eternally ; 
To-day, that wafts to you and me 

A breath of Eden's prime, 
That greets us, glad and large and free — 

It is our golden prime. 

For Yesterday hath veiled her face, 

And gone as far away 
As sands that swept the pyramids 

In Egypt's ancient day. 
No man shall look on Yesterday, 

Or tryst with her again; 
Forever gone her toils, her prayers, 

Her conflicts, and her' pains. 

******* 

* 

You ask me for the golden time — 

I bid you seize the hour, 
And fill it full of earnest work, 

While yet you have the power. 
To-day the golden time for joy 

Beneath the household eaves; 
To-day the royal time for work, < 

For bringing in the sheaves. 



492 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

To-day the golden time for peace, 

For righting older feuds; 
For sending forth from every heart 

Whatever sin intrudes 
To-day the time to consecrate 

Your life to God above ; 
To-day the time to banish hate, 

The golden time for love." 

Even if we desire the boon of self-forgetfulness for no special grief cr out- 
rage, for no worse trouble than a well -grown disgust of ourselves, a sense of 
fatigue with our own personality, there is no other way to get it than to go into 
the personality of others. The anchorite has practiced this truth in desert 
caves, ceasing the remembrance of his unworthiness in the contemplation of 
beings and states beyond this mortal sphere ; the dweller in cities seeks the 
crowd to lose himself there. That is a very vain and very shallow nature which 
is so satisfied with itself as to need no change of view; for so imperfect are we 
yet that the only permanent happiness to be acquired, the only tranquillity of 
soul, must come through this thorny path of self-forgetfulness. 



On Tranquil Heights. 

Only when we have reached, if not the very consummation of self-abnega- 
tion and forgetfulness, yet at any rate such a height that we can see the way 
clear that leads to the heights beyond, will our eyes be opened, and will we see 
the work about us as it is, and see our fellow- wayfarers as they are, knowing, 
then, that full often and all unaware, we go hand in hand with angels. 



Hand in Hand with Angels. 

Hand in hand with angels, 

Through the world we go; 
Brighter eyes are on us 

Than we blind ones know ; 
Tenderer voices cheer us 

Than we deaf will own ; 
Never, walking heavenward. 

Can we walk alone. 

Hand in hand with angels, 

In the busy street, 
By the winter hearth-fires — 

Everywhere — we meet, 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

493 

Though unfledged and songless, 
Birds of Paradise ; 

Heaven looks at us daily- 
Out of human eyes. 

Hand in hand with angels, 

Oft in menial guise; 
By the same straight pathway 

Prince and beggar rise. 
If we drop the fingers 

Toil-imbrowned and worn, 
Then one link with heaven 

From our life is torn. 

Hand, in hand with angels: 

Some are fallen — alas! 
Soiled wings trail pollution 

Over all they pass. 
Lift them into sunshine! 

Bid them seek the sky- 
Weaker is your soaring 

When they cease to fly. 

Hand in hand with angels ; 

Some are out of sight, 
Leading us, unknowing, 

Into paths of light. 
Some dear hands are loosened 

From our earthly clasp, 
Soul in soul to hold us 

With a firmer grasp. 

Hand in hand with angels — 

'Tis a twisted chain 
Winding heavenward, earthward, 

Linking joy and pain. 
There's a mournful jarring, 

There's a clank of doubt, 
If a heart grows heavy, 

Or a hand's left out. 

Hand in hand with angels 

Walking every day ; — 
How the chain may lengthen 

None of us can say; 
But we know it reaches 

From earth's lowliest one 
To the shining seraph 

Throned beyond the sun. 



494 STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 

Hand in hand with angels! 

Blessed so to be ! 
Helped are the helpers; 

Giving light, they see. 
Hj Who aids another 

Strengthens more than one; 
Sinking earth be grapples 

To the Great White Throne. 

Earth indeed sinks from us when we have gone so high. We wonder at 
the trifles we have pursued, and at the false relations these trifles have held for 
as — the honors, the achievements, the riches. 



The Riches of Angels. 

"What," asks Lucy Larcom, "what can an angel regard as riches? 
Certainly nothing that is appreciable by our mortal senses — not such things as 
we see with covetous eyes, and touch with miserly hands, and lock away from 
thieves in tomb-like coffers. Milton has drawn for us a fancy sketch of one 
such sordid angel, among the rebellious host: 

1 Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 

From heaven, for even in heaven bis looks and thoughts 

Were always downward bent, admiring more 

The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 

Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 

In vision beatific.' 

" But the messengers of God, who fly abroad on His errands through the 
universe, cannot travel with their winged thoughts weighted by any material 
burden. An angel's riches are the messages he bears — messages of love and 
truth from the heart of God to His creatures. The messenger knows that he 
is the bearer of inestimable wealth, but he has no desire regarding it except 
that it may reach its destination, and bless the souls for whom it was intended. 
If any selfish hoarding of truth and love were possible, the truth would turn 
to falsehood, and love to hate — and heaven would be hell. The heavenly riches 
must be given away, freely as the air we breathe, or it is no longer heavenly. 
Again the plural gives the pronoun its value. 'All things are yours,' We 
are not the real possessors of things earthly or heavenly, while we persist in 
saying, 'They are mine;' the only permanent claim we have upon them is 
that they are ours. God never gives us anything for our individual self 
alone. The divineness of His gifts is proved by our desire to share them with 
others. It is only perishable objects that we can hold selfishly, and in so hold- 
ing them, they and we perish together." 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 495 

True Happiness at Last. 

It is only the soul that has reached these tranquil levels where self has 
been over-lived, and the love of man and the love of God has filled it with seren- 
ity, that can know true happiness, that has ceased from concern, that can live 
unashamed before its own scrutiny and assoiled before the heavenly gaze; and 
so having lived, so can die — die as sweetly and as calmly as in Matthew Arnold's 
beautiful poem, "A Wish," it is desired to die, passing from one life to another, 
and from one mansion of A he Father's house to the next. 



Matthew Arnold's Wish. 

41 1 ask not that my bed of death 

From bands of greedy heirs be free ; 

For these besiege the latest breath 
Of fortune's favored sons, not me. 

I ask not each kind soul to keep 
Tearless, when of my death he hears ; 

Let those who will, if any, weep ! 
There are worse plagues on earth than tears. 

I ask but that my death may find 

The freedom to my life denied ; 
Ask but the folly of mankind, 

Then, then at last, to quit my side. 

Spare me the whispering, crowded room, 
The friends who come, and gape, and go 

The ceremonious air of gloom — 
All that makes death a hideous show ! 

Nor bring, to see me cease to live, 
Some doctor full of phrase and fame, 

To shake his sapient head and give 
The ill he cannot cure a name. 

Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll 
Of the poor sinner bound for death, 

His brother doctor of the soul, 
To canvass, with official breath, 

The future and its viewless things — 

That undiscovered mystery 
Which one who feels death's winnowing wings 

Must needs read clearer, sure, than he ! 



496 



STEPPING STONES TO HAPPINESS. 



Bring none of these ! but let me be, 
While all around in silence lies, 

Moved to the window near, and see 
Once more before my dying eyes, 

Bathed in the sacred dews of morn 
The wide aerial landscape spread— 

The world which was ere I was born, 
The world which lasts when I am dead : 

Which never w T as the friend of one, 
Nor promised love it could not give, 

But lit for all its generous sun, 
And lived itself, and made us live. 

There let me gaze, till I become 
In soul with what I gaze .on wed ! 

To feel the universe my home; 
To have before my mind — instead 

Of the sick room, the mortal strife, 
The turmoil for a little breath — 

The pure eternal course of life, 

Not human combatings with death. 

Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow 

Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear; 

Then willing let my spirit go 
To work or wait elsewhere or here! " 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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